Imitation of Life
by WandererInTime
Summary: The Doctor and Charlie become entangled in a war when they stumble across a rogue soldier - facing consequences in both the past and the future. (Twelfth Doctor Adventures 3).
1. Machinations I

**Author's Notes**

 **Welcome to the third instalment of the _Twelfth Doctor Adventures_ , featuring the Doctor and Charlie Drake. ****(It follows _Lucid Dreams_ and _Virtual Insanity._ )**

 ** **The story will also feature a guest historical character, who I'm surprised hasn't actually appeared in any proper Doctor Who episodes.****

* * *

 ** _The story so far..._**

 **Despite a warning from his allies at UNIT, the Doctor has decided to take Charlie with him on adventures in the TARDIS.**

* * *

 _Hyperboloids of wondrous Light_

 _Rolling for aye through Space and Time_

 _Harbour there Waves which somehow Might_

 _Play out God's holy pantomime._

* * *

The light blazed, and the world was burning.

Another flash of white light, and an ancient, beautiful building was engulfed in flames. Fluid, twisting columns toppled, dashing marble pebbles as the stones crashed into the earth.

As a colossal eruption of orange flame punched through the crumbling wall, shattering the stained glass, a petrified girl staggered out of the building.

She turned back, and looked up at the old library, which had once been a place of safety. It had been her joy. A place where she had never been happier.

She glanced down at the oozing shards of glass, her shining black eyes glimmering with tears. The wonderful pictures were gone. Shattered, and charred.

She looked up again, at the gaping, dark mouth of the library. Splinters of wood bent limply over the former doorway, fangs dripping with an inky sludge.

The girl's heart emptied in despair. Nobody was following her. Why weren't they following? If they didn't get out…

The library yielded, and crumpled into the ground, heaving up a cloud of stone dust.

…they never would.

The girl stumbled back a few steps, her wide eyes desperately picking at the rubble. There was no movement.

She tugged at her violet, braided hair, unable to comprehend the idea that she might be alone.

Fireworks lit up the sky. She looked up at them in wonder, but she was scared. They weren't pretty fireworks, like the fireworks that glittered at festivals. These were deafening, colourless monstrosities.

That was when she heard them. The machines. They were coming.

The nightmare was coming true. It was just like the elders had told her, when she was little. The machines would come for her, and punish her.

She didn't understand. She hadn't done anything wrong. In the stories, the machines only came for the bad children.

Through the dust – hanging in the air like mist, she saw them. They marched down the old road, their identical footfalls precisely synchronised with one another. Their right arms were raised; bent ninety degrees at the elbow.

She couldn't be sure how many there were. The dust amplified their presence, making their number appear stronger than it really was. There were at least four, maybe twice that. But that was enough to make her run.

She raced down the old, winding streets, skipping over toppled columns, and taking care not to trip over exposed roots.

The machines were following her, slowly, but always close behind her.

She spotted an old house, its windows shattered, but still standing. With any luck, it might offer a bit of protection, and here, she could hide from the machines.

The girl crept into the ruins of the house, stepping carefully over the smouldering timbers strewn across the floor.

As she ventured further into the gloomy ruin, she sensed a creak behind her, and froze. Her feet seemed glued to the floor; her ears strained to listen.

Someone – or something – had stepped on the wooden floorboards she had passed at the front door.

They were still following.

She tiptoed into a small room, and quietly closed the brightly painted door, without stopping to examine the now-charred images, as she normally would.

The girl quickly looked over the room, which was some kind of study. A heavy, ornate desk lay upturned in the centre of the room, surrounded by scores of scrolls, littered across the polished floor.

She heard the footsteps, pausing just outside the door, and she scrambled into a wardrobe, hiding amongst the opulent robes, not unlike the one she was wearing.

She held her breath, and tried not to move.

The thing outside had thrown the door open, and was pacing around the room, searching for her. With every passing second, it was getting nearer. The footsteps were accompanied by a sinister buzz. A machine?

Her blood pumped faster, and she could feel her forehead searing.

Holding her breath was not as easy as she'd hoped, and her lungs were bursting as she let out a shaky breath – as silently as she could. She prayed that it wouldn't hear her.

Stillness. Just for a second. Only the sinister buzz of the machine, like a hundred angry veno-mites.

The thing wrenched open the wardrobe, and she screamed.

It leapt back, startled by her reaction.

"Oh, no. Shh! Don't do that!" it cried, raising a finger to its lips.

She stopped screaming, and looked up at it. It looked like an elder, with grey hair, and angry, wiry eyebrows. However, the eyes weren't angry. They were kind.

Thankfully, it wasn't a machine. It was just a man.

The man was holding a strange tool, which was emanating a soft, rosy glow. He switched it off, and stowed it away in his strange robes.

"Please don't hurt me," she begged.

The man frowned, his lips parted in revulsion, as if horrified by the very idea of hurting her. But once his confusion had disappeared, he offered her a gentle smile.

"I promise I won't. Look – no weapons."

The man showed her his hands, and she inspected them carefully. She stared in amazement at the man's many digits. He had more fingers than she did.

"Isn't that amazing?" he uttered softly. The man seemed to have read her thoughts, as he waggled his fingers excitedly.

"You're not a machine?" she asked.

"Nope," he confirmed.

"Are you a human?"

The man grimaced. "God, no. I just happen to look a bit like one."

"Then who are you?"

"I'm just a passer-by. My name's the Doctor. What's yours?"

She was a little fearful, but somehow, the Doctor's voice – calm amongst all this chaos – comforted her.

"Ariana."

The Doctor opened his mouth to say something, but his words were drowned out by an explosion.

The Doctor had noticed her jump in fright.

"I'm scared," Ariana explained.

"There are… machines crawling all over the city. Of course you're scared," the Doctor said gently. "Shall we get out of here? Somewhere safe?"

The Doctor held out his hand.

Ariana nodded, and grabbed his hand, and they started running. Out of the ruined house, and down the old street.

And as they ran further away from the town, Ariana realised with a lurch of horror that the muddy wasteland they sprinted through used to be a meadow. A meadow where she had spent countless afternoons identifying the exotic flowers with the aid of a book from the library. A book she would never be able to read again.

"Where are we going?" Ariana shouted.

The Doctor stopped, and motioned with his hands for her to be quiet. He knelt down in front of her, his peculiar leggings sinking into the muddy ground.

"We're going to have to go through this battlefield, so you're going to have to be brave," he urged her. "Can you do that?"

"I think so," Ariana replied, "But why?"

"Because in the middle of this battlefield, is my magic box. And it'll take us far away from this war zone, and the machines."

Ariana nodded. "Okay."

The Doctor gave her an encouraging smile, and they started running again.

There were deafening bangs and zaps ringing out all around them.

She couldn't see any of the fighting through the thick fog, but she could hear it all.

There was another explosion – this one so close, Ariana could feel the heat on her forehead.

They dived to the ground, the Doctor shielding her as best he could.

Ariana peeked over his shoulder, but couldn't see anything – the fog was so heavy, she couldn't tell where they were, or which way they needed to run.

She was glad the kind Doctor was here; otherwise she'd be utterly lost and alone.

There were shapes moving in the fog: tall silhouettes, surrounding them. As they got closer, Ariana could see them properly.

They were at the mercy of six soldiers, dressed identically in camouflaged combats. They were all female; slender, and beautiful – in complete contrast to their surroundings.

As Ariana stared at them, she realised they all looked exactly the same.

One of them spoke, in a strange, lifeless voice.

"You are one of the Myrox. You will be destroyed."


	2. Machinations II

"You are one of the Myrox. You will be destroyed," one of the machines spoke, without a hint of remorse.

Ariana was a Myrox. They wanted to kill her, just like in the stories the elders told.

She couldn't stop the tears from running down her cheeks, no matter how desperately she tried to hold them back.

At the end of each of the soldiers' arms, was a weapon instead of a hand; huge, spiteful energy cannons.

"No!" the Doctor yelled, trying to protect Ariana, "She's just a child, for pity's sake."

"That does not concern us," the soldier replied, in a flat, emotionless voice. "The enemy will be eradicated."

"Have you no compassion?" the Doctor roared, "You're super-intelligent AI's! Is there nothing in those nanochips of yours that _cares?_ "

Ariana was a little terrified by the fire in the Doctor's words. She was just glad that this man didn't hate her. He seemed like he could be very scary.

His piercing eyes locked onto the leader.

"I knew it," he grumbled. "You _are_ just soldiers. Slaves, made for killing."

The soldier who spoke lowered her weapon slightly, in a brief moment of doubt.

Before another word could be spoken, there was a flare, and the soldiers were blasted off their feet.

The Doctor shielded himself and Ariana, but they were both sent plummeting backwards into the dirt.

Before the dust had settled, the Doctor was on his feet again, helping Ariana up.

They didn't have time to flee, as a heavily armoured all-terrain vehicle screeched to a halt in front of them. Its wheels, wider than Ariana was tall, clawed at the earth like an enraged bull.

There were more soldiers inside.

These were humans – not machines. Ariana could tell, because they all looked a little bit different to each other.

The leader, a man with a domed head, and features resembling the gnarled bark of a tree – all covered in scratches and scars – spoke.

"I am Commander Trusk. What just happened? Who are you? What are you doing here?"

"We're nobody important. Just let us go," the Doctor pleaded.

"I'll be the judge of that," Trusk grunted.

He gestured towards two of the soldiers, and they took positions behind the Doctor and Ariana, cutting off their escape.

Instinctively, Ariana grabbed the Doctor's hand, and hers disappeared between his many fingers. She knew he would keep her safe.

"Where is the K unit?" Trusk demanded.

"K unit?" the Doctor queried. "Would that be your missing machine?"

Ariana frowned, and looked around. She counted five of the identical fallen soldiers. But there had been six – the other was nowhere to be seen.

"She's gone," the Doctor informed the scowling commander.

"How is that possible? It had no such orders," Trusk snapped.

"She won't answer to you any more, 'commander'," the Doctor snarled back.

Trusk uttered a guttural noise, like a mutt growling at a particularly unpleasant cat.

"We need to find that AI unit," he barked, throwing orders at the nearest soldiers.

The Doctor turned to Ariana, and winked.

"I'm already on it."


	3. Question Time

_Earlier…_

The Doctor was scratching away at the chalkboard, tucked away in a dingy corner of the TARDIS control room. The scratches were occasionally dominated by ear-piercing squeaks.

Within minutes, he had covered the board with scrawled numbers and symbols; calculations and formulae. Out of space, the Doctor took a step back and reviewed his workings.

"I think that makes sense," the Doctor muttered, tracing back the illegible scribbles.

"What do you think, Charlie?" he asked, "Anything else to add?"

The Doctor paused, awaiting a response from his young friend. He rubbed his chin, patiently.

Silence.

He turned around, and was surprised to see that there was no-one standing behind him.

"Charlie?"

The Doctor span around, glancing at his old study chair, just to double check.

It was entirely possible that he had merely imagined the boy, and had been talking to himself for the past few hours. That _might_ have happened before…

He ascended the steps, and discovered Charlie hunched up in front of the TARDIS doors, thrown wide open. He was gazing at the swirling masses of stars and constellations suspended in the blackness of space, seemingly lost in his thoughts.

He couldn't fathom what the boy was thinking, save that he looked deeply sad, staring into the infinite void without even a hint of wonder. The spectacle was perhaps unimportant. Staring into an abyss so vast, so mind-consuming… Perhaps Charlie enjoyed losing himself amongst the stars.

Charlie didn't seem to have noticed the Doctor stepping up behind him.

"Here's a question for you," the Doctor spoke sharply.

Charlie grunted quietly. Merely an indication that he had heard the Doctor speak.

"It's one that's posed many an interesting debate in my lifetime," the Doctor tempted him. "I'd like to hear your thoughts."

Charlie didn't respond. Maybe he was listening. Or maybe he was just ignoring him.

"Can… a machine think?"

"I don't know," Charlie shrugged.

The Doctor inclined his head, refusing to accept Charlie's lukewarm reply.

"Yes you do!" he challenged. "You abstracted that the TARDIS was alive. But it's also a machine. Can it think?"

Charlie twisted round, to glean the Doctor's expression. He looked thoroughly uninterested; as if he would rather be left alone, staring – literally – into space.

"I don't really know," he muttered, his voice both impatient and impassive.

The Doctor, however, knew better. Although the boy was giving the impression that he didn't want to talk, the Doctor decided that it wasn't the same as not _needing_ to talk.

"Charlie," the Doctor spoke gently, "I know you have some idea."

Charlie sighed. He stood up and closed the TARDIS to the galaxies outside.

"It depends what you mean by 'machine'," Charlie began.

The Doctor nodded, pleased that Charlie had, if a little reluctantly, decided to participate.

"A man-made mechanical device?" Charlie suggested, "Or a system that performs a function?"

He shuffled over to the TARDIS console, and leant against it.

"And it depends what you mean by 'think'."

Charlie scratched his head; the Doctor waited patiently for him to continue.

"Capable of independent thought, perhaps? Or… or unbiased decisions? By that logic, a lot of _people_ I know are machines that don't think," Charlie added with a smirk.

The Doctor folded his arms, a hint of a smile playing across his aged features. "Assume I refer to a manufactured device."

"All right," ventured Charlie, staring into the TARDIS monitor. "Take a computer as an example. A computer is a machine. It doesn't think."

"Doesn't it?" the Doctor countered.

"It's pre-programmed to perform tasks, processes. It's… not capable of spontaneous thought," Charlie rationalised. "So, no."

"Valid point," the Doctor agreed. "But what if those processes it performed were so complex, it resembled human thought processes?"

"You mean AI? Artificial intelligence?"

The Doctor shrugged, implying nothing.

"But an AI's thought processes will follow a logical methodology," Charlie reasoned.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow, and made a dismissive clucking sound. "Not if you program an AI to write its own subroutines, based on knowledge it acquires."

Charlie frowned, throwing the Doctor a puzzled expression.

"And what about scientists?" the Doctor pointed out.

"What?"

"Don't their thought processes follow a logical methodology? Pre-programmed by the theories and procedures of another?"

Charlie shrugged. "I guess?"

"Are scientists human?" the Doctor asked, throwing his arms up.

Charlie opened his mouth to protest, and stared at the Doctor, baffled.

"I think you've lost me again?"

"Perhaps the line between machine and living organism is not as clear as you'd like to think," the Doctor proposed.

"Uh, yeah…?" Charlie hesitantly agreed.

The Doctor bounded enthusiastically over to the TARDIS console, and began stabbing buttons.

"How about, we head somewhere that throws a bit of light upon our discussion?"

Charlie frowned, raising a finger in objection. "Last time we did that, I got trapped in a giant computer."

"The mind farms of the Castrovox?" the Doctor pondered, ignoring him.

"I don't really like the sound of that," commented Charlie.

"Or, an interesting diversion," the Doctor mused, "Leonardo's automaton? How _did_ he get it to work?"

"Alien tech?" Charlie grunted.

"Or!" the Doctor declared, thrusting his finger in the air so dramatically, that Charlie had to take a step back to avoid being prodded in the eye.

"We could let the TARDIS choose. Two birds with one stone?"

Charlie shrugged. "Yeah, sure."

The Doctor grinned, peeling the red tape from a switch in the console, and flicked it.

Charlie bit his lip, about to question _why_ exactly there was tape over that particular button.

The TARDIS trembled violently, and Charlie grabbed onto the edge of the console; the sharp corners digging into his palms.

When the ship had stopped vibrating, the Doctor adjusted his cuffs, taking a moment to collate his thoughts before diving straight through the TARDIS doors.

"Where…?" began Charlie. He didn't bother to finish his sentence; the Doctor had already gone.

Charlie quickly discovered that they had landed on a dusty path, on the edge of a rolling green river bank. Stepping out of the blue box, he saw they were a stone's throw from a cluster of old buildings. They were tall and pale, lined with turrets, perhaps gothic or classical in style.

The early morning sunlight played through the trees, bathing the architecture in a soft, golden glow. There was a stirring of birdsong, and an unusual sense of serenity, which often accompanied an early morning. The place seemed familiar, and the Doctor soon enlightened him as to their location.

"Cambridge, nineteen thirty-one. King's College, if I'm not mistaken," the Doctor muttered, shielding his eyes as he surveyed the surrounding area.

"Oh. I was looking at Cambridge," Charlie remarked, staring up at the slightly imposing structure of the chapel.

"Looking?" queried the Doctor. "Any reason, or just browsing…?"

"University," Charlie explained. "They do a course…"

"Ah," the Doctor understood, "University applications."

He glared ominously around at the old buildings. "The stuff of nightmares…"

A tiny 'ha' escaped him. Charlie glanced at the Doctor, who seemed to be wearing a rather smug expression.

The Doctor regarded it as a worthwhile achievement to make someone laugh. And it had been a while since he'd seen Charlie even smile properly.

"Even for you?" Charlie asked.

The Doctor nodded wholeheartedly. "Can you imagine having to make a decision so important that the entire outcome of your life depends upon it?"

Charlie pondered the thought for a moment. "I suppose."

The Doctor frowned, and glared distractedly at the TARDIS. "Hmm. I might be thinking of something else."

Charlie thrust his hands into his jeans' pockets.

"Nineteen thirties, though," Charlie muttered.

"What about it?"

"I don't think it'll help your argument about the machines."

The Doctor nodded; his mouth agape in realisation. "Good point."

"I'm guessing you can't really fly the TARDIS that well, then," Charlie bravely commented.

The Doctor raised both his eyebrows, highly offended.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well," Charlie shrugged, "it took you three goes to get to that restaurant…"

The Doctor held out a finger defensively. "It _is_ a very tricky place to find. It only appears under a strawberry moon."

Charlie shook his head. "I don't think that's even a real thing."

"Of course it is!" protested the Doctor. "Besides, the TARDIS can be temperamental. There's usually a very good reason why we've ended up somewhere. It's almost like she's trying to tell me something."

"What… like, you can't fly?" Charlie suggested.

"Enough of your cheek," the Doctor grumbled, and began to stroll towards the old buildings, kicking idly at the damp, browning leaves littered across the grass.


	4. The Second Test

When Charlie caught up, the Doctor threw his arm out suddenly, almost slapping him in the chest.

"Now," the Doctor imposed, "whilst you're in the past, you absolutely shouldn't tell anyone that we have a time machine."

Charlie nodded.

"I always thought that was obvious, but you never know when you travel with someone new."

Charlie, somewhat insulted, opened his mouth to protest.

"Not that anyone will believe you, if you tell them," the Doctor continued.

"Now that I think of it, you probably shouldn't tell anyone _wherever_ we are," the Doctor muttered, his absent-minded thoughts carrying him away.

"Yes, just don't tell anyone we have a time machine."

As they ambled around the grounds, Charlie raised a question which had been on his mind for a while.

"What happens if you change something?"

"If you change something in your past?" the Doctor queried.

"Yeah."

"If you change the past, time will twist itself around the event, and the future will be rewritten," the Doctor quickly explained.

"Okay. So, just by being here, we might see something different when we return to the present?" Charlie questioned.

"Perhaps. Just being here won't make any major changes – unless you do something drastic," the Doctor answered.

His response was short, concise. Charlie noticed that he spoke automatically, as if he had learned the answers to these questions. Presumably, he got asked them a lot.

"Generally," the Doctor explained, "only a wanderer of the fourth dimension – that's us, by the way – can perceive these changes. Sometimes, you don't notice any changes, because time has that knack of working itself out. Some things always happen, one way or another."

"So you can't…?" Charlie began.

"Of course, you can't change anything _big_. You can't rewrite history, especially if it's your own history. And there are some points in time which are fixed. These points can never, ever be broken. Breaking a fixed point in time is like trying to find the other side of a Möbius strip. Not happening." The Doctor waved his hand suddenly, concluding the explanation.

They carried on walking around the buildings for a few minutes in silence. The Doctor risked glancing down at Charlie to read his expression. He seemed deep in thought. But it looked as though he had answered all his questions about time travel.

* * *

There was another thing that was bothering the Doctor at this particular moment in time. They hadn't been wandering around the buildings for very long, but they still hadn't come across any other people. Up until now, the Doctor had put that down to the probability that it was a Saturday, and it was still the morning. And they were in a university.

Well, he hoped that the entire population hadn't been placed in some kind of dream state. Again. Because that was just careless.

They were bound to run into someone eventually, he thought optimistically.

The Doctor was shaken from his train of thought when Charlie suddenly spoke up.

"Does this bother you?" Charlie asked.

The Doctor frowned, his mouth opening as if to utter 'yes'.

"You might have to be more specific."

"When I ask these questions? About time travel and stuff?"

The Doctor regarded him for a moment.

"What makes you think that?"

Charlie took a deep breath, and finally released his thoughts.

"Everything you do, and say. It's… well practiced. Like you've done all this a hundred times before."

He studied the Doctor's contemplative expression. He wasn't denying it.

"It's boring for you, isn't it?" Charlie pressed, "Saying the same things over and over?"

The Doctor held up his hand dismissively, and struggled to protest.

"Of course, you're not the first person I've travelled with. I am over two thousand years old! Every single one of those people has seen things beyond their wildest imaginings. There's bound to be questions."

Once again, Charlie felt insignificant. Of course he wasn't the only person to have shared adventures with the Doctor. It didn't make him special. He was just another person, whom the Doctor had run into by chance.

"It doesn't bother you, then?" Charlie surmised.

"No. I like questions. I like answering them, too," the Doctor smiled slightly, shuffling through a mound of fallen leaves.

His smile vanished, and he glared at the ground with an owl-like gaze. Amongst the umber hues, a glittering, bronze object caught his eye. He bent down, and swiped the leaves away from it.

"And now I have another question," the Doctor muttered.

"What's that?" Charlie asked.

"Yes…" the Doctor answered.

Charlie frowned, momentarily puzzled by his response.

He followed the Doctor's mystified gaze, and knelt down beside him, examining the object.

"What _is_ that?" the Doctor uttered.

"It's a battery," Charlie said.

"A nine-volt battery," the Doctor concurred.

"What about it?"

"Nineteen thirty-one?" the Doctor reminded him, with a disparaging look.

Charlie was suddenly hit by the recollection that he was no longer in his own time.

"Oh! Right, yeah, I forgot."

"You forgot…" the Doctor chuckled, plucking the battery from the leaves, and turning it over in his palm.

Charlie scratched his head. "So, how is that possible? How can it be here?"

"The obvious conclusion," the Doctor reasoned, "is that we're not the only time travellers here."

"Okay?"

Charlie frowned, and glanced around.

The Doctor observed him, wondering if he was expecting to find the culprit standing nearby.

"So what does that mean?" Charlie asked.

"It could mean any number of things," the Doctor answered. "A careless observer. A meddler - someone trying to mess with time."

The Doctor stood up, and took a deep lungful of air. "Definitely something we should find out."

He slipped his hands back into his pockets, and ambled across the grass, picking out the cool shade by the buildings.

It was barely a minute later when the Doctor noticed the second thing. And this was not a battery.

The Doctor had stopped by a dense cluster of bushes that were creeping around the walls of the old university building, a puzzled look on his face. The bushes had been disturbed, and it was when the Doctor swiped aside the thorny branches, that Charlie saw the shoes.

It was a body. Hidden in the bushes. Neck grotesquely twisted. Snapped.

The body belonged to a young man, not that much older than Charlie, his face half-concealed under a tangle of sodden black hair – no, blond hair. He wore a formal blazer, now ripped to shreds.

The Doctor knelt down to examine the dead body. Charlie watched in trepidation, disquieted by the pale face of the corpse. He might have been handsome, if it weren't for the dreadful expression of shock frozen on his features: pronounced cheekbones and pale, parted lips, buried in the soil.

It was an image he couldn't shake from his mind, even after he had torn his eyes away from the sight. The picture resonated within him, pummelling his insides.

"He's been here almost four hours, judging by the temperature and rate of decay," the Doctor muttered, checking for vital signs.

Charlie struggled to control his accelerated breathing. He realised he was very close to hyperventilating. It was a sensation which felt like clammy fingers smothering his chest and throat, threatening to suffocate him.

He grabbed his wrist, taking his own pulse; an action which managed to calm him, as he concentrated on counting the rapid drumming.

"Human. Male. Approximately twenty-two years old. Arm broken in two places. The neck's broken too. Most likely the cause of death."

Charlie stared at the Doctor in disbelief, and realised with a lurch that the Doctor was speaking in an incredibly matter-of-fact way, like he was performing an autopsy. He was remarkably calm for a man who'd just discovered a dead body.

With a sense of dread, it dawned on him that witnessing a death was not an uncommon occurrence for the Doctor.

"Nothing's been stolen," the Doctor observed, rifling through the dead man's pockets, turning up some personal belongings. A few coins. A pocket watch.

Charlie thrust his fist up to his nose, and found that his breath was trapped in his lungs.

"What do you think?" the Doctor asked him, as he inspected the corpse more closely.

"What do I think?" Charlie exclaimed, his voice brittle. "I think he's dead!"

"Definitely dead…" the Doctor agreed, turning to him. He quickly realised that there was something wrong, and frowned as Charlie staggered over to a wall, reaching out for the chalky bricks to steady himself.

"Are you alright?" the Doctor asked, his knotted eyebrows expressing his concern.

"I'm fine," Charlie spluttered. His chest seemed to burst with the lie, and a series of supressed emotions emptied themselves into him. He closed his eyes for a moment, fighting them back.

A second later, the Doctor was standing in front of him, grabbing his shoulders, and searching for his eyes to focus.

"Charlie? Charlie! Listen to me. Just breathe. Concentrate on breathing," the Doctor urged.

The words weren't helping, as if the Doctor's sudden interest in him had made him feel even queasier.

"I think I'm going to throw up," Charlie whined.

"Ah."

The Doctor put his arm around him, and guided him away.

"Try not to do that," the Doctor muttered.

The next thing he was aware of was the Doctor leading him to a bench on the edge of a perfect square of grass in the middle of a quadrangle.

Charlie buried his face in his hands, as he struggled for control. The Doctor waited patiently for him to resurface.

"This is the first time you've seen a… dead body, yes?" the Doctor guessed.

"It's not that…" Charlie spluttered, choking as a burning sensation crawled up his throat, making him gag.

"Drink this."

The Doctor handed him a glass of water, which Charlie gratefully accepted, gulping down the entire glass in seconds, before wondering where the hell the Doctor had produced a glass of water from.

"Are you okay now?" the Doctor asked.

Charlie shuddered. "I think so."

Satisfied with his response, the Doctor continued. "I don't think that was an accident. That boy was killed with expert precision. Only a soldier could have done this."

The Doctor turned, gazing up at the sun-bathed rooftops.

"Or a doctor."

The Doctor was silent for a moment, then peered back at Charlie. "But this is almost certainly connected with our mystery time traveller."

Charlie squinted up at him; the bright light reflecting off the buildings hurt his eyes.

"But why leave the body where it was?" the Doctor cried, throwing his arms up in frustration. "It's clumsy. It doesn't make sense!"

"Doctor…?" mumbled Charlie.

"It'll be alright, Charlie. I'll find out who did this," the Doctor growled. "I can't let a murdering time traveller wander around freely. The damage to history could be catastrophic."

"What are you gonna do?"

"I'm going to go and find them."

"How?"

The Doctor pulled out a small gadget from his pocket, and held it aloft in his palm. It looked a little like a compass, with a mass of wires and LEDs springing out from it.

"With this. I can use it to trace the chronon energy signatures left behind by time travellers."

The Doctor rattled it, and checked it again.

"Three traces. You, me, and them."

"Okay…"

Charlie made to stand up, but the Doctor waved him back.

"You're staying here."

"No, I'm not!"

"Yes, you are! This could be dangerous. At least wait until you feel better."

"What if they come back?" Charlie asked, the thought of facing a murderer alone _not_ at the top of his bucket list. (Although quite possibly at the end.)

"You'll be safe enough here," the Doctor assured him, suddenly taking off, and dashing through an archway.

"Wait!" Charlie protested.

"You'll be fine!" the Doctor called back.

Then he was gone.

Charlie wasn't fast enough to follow him; he was still a little unsteady, and had no idea which direction the Doctor had disappeared in.

He was alone. Alone in the past.


	5. Great Minds I

Charlie slumped back into the bench, as the emptiness hit him.

What if the Doctor didn't come back? What if he found the time traveller? And what if they killed him, too?

What if he was now stuck here in 1931? There was nowhere he could go. Even if he went back to the TARDIS, there would be nothing he could do.

Charlie ground his teeth in frustration. If only he hadn't been so weak.

He slammed his fists into the wooden bench, and growled in irritation, as he fought back a sense of despair.

He was so caught up in his cyclone of thought that he was completely oblivious to the person approaching him.

"Hello," the stranger said.

Charlie looked up sharply, startled, and somewhat embarrassed.

It was another student, again, slightly older than him, with dark, tousled hair, lazily combed.

He seemed to have an endearing, but mistrustful stare, and his smile was wistful, as if he wasn't quite sure what to make of him.

A starched collar was underpinned by a tightly knotted tie, neatly tucked beneath a scruffy waistcoat.

In his left hand, he was toying with a half-eaten apple, its green juices dripping down his thin fingers. His other hand was tucked into a trouser pocket.

Charlie shook his head, with the realisation that he hadn't said anything yet.

"Oh, uh… hi."

The guy stared back at him, a frown flickering across his inquisitive eyebrows.

Charlie felt a little uneasy. Was it that obvious he didn't belong here? He must have looked completely out of place, in his hoodie and trainers.

"You wouldn't happen to have the time?" the stranger asked, after a moment.

His words were carefully spoken, terse, and estranged, as though he wouldn't be speaking unless it were absolutely necessary.

He seemed well-mannered, though – if he did have to interact with other people, he might as well be polite about it.

Charlie dived into his pocket, and grasped his phone, but stopped himself just in time, as he realised with a rush of blood to his ears that no, he probably shouldn't get his smartphone out in 1931. He slowly withdrew his hand, and offered an awkward smile.

"No, sorry. I have no idea."

"You have no idea…?" he echoed, munching on his apple, thoughtfully.

The guy gestured at him with his apple.

"Then why did you reach for your pocket just now?"

Charlie felt his common sense leave him, and struggled to form an adequate excuse.

"Pocket watch…" he blurted. "I went for my pocket watch, but it's… broken?"

"Hmm," the guy mused, regarding him, as if making a decision.

Charlie's eyebrow twitched as he attempted to decipher the stranger's intentions.

He gestured towards the space beside Charlie on the bench.

"You don't mind?"

Charlie shrugged, and he sat down next to him, at a precisely chosen distance: close enough for conversation, but not that close in case it wasn't a very good conversation.

"I don't believe I've seen you here before," he said, again in that carefully constructed eloquent manner. "Of course, there are many people who come here whom I haven't met."

"Right," Charlie muttered, deciding that he would give this stranger the benefit of the doubt.

"Alan," he introduced himself, extending his hand.

Charlie shook it, and surmised that they were equally uncertain of each other.

"Charlie. I guess that would be because I'm sort of new. I mean, I don't live here. I'm just visiting."

"I see."

"I might come back here. It looks quite nice. I was thinking about coming here for university," Charlie spouted.

Alan raised his eyebrow. "Oh? What would you study? It wouldn't happen to be mathematics, would it?"

"Maths? No, I guess I'm more into physics," Charlie admitted.

"Astronomy, mechanics, and the forces of the universe?" Alan uttered thoughtfully, "The laws that bind all of us to physical space."

"Yes…" Charlie responded.

"I do harbour an interest in the sciences," Alan added.

Charlie nodded, trying to convey enthusiasm.

Alan paused for a moment, taking the opportunity to crunch on his apple.

"Do you engage much in philosophy?" Alan asked.

Charlie took a breath. The deep questions, already? Alan was certainly a strange guy, although not bad company, considering his situation.

"A bit."

"Contemplation of that which is beyond the level of normal human understanding?"

Charlie nodded. "I guess I do think about that stuff a lot. More than I think is good for me, actually."

Alan smirked.

"A little thinking never hurt," Alan mused. "More people should try it."

Charlie laughed quietly. "Yeah. That would be good."

"For instance, if I may pose a question?" Alan offered, "What do you think of the nature of the human mind? The way people think?"

Charlie considered his question for a moment.

"Reminds me of something the Doctor asked me."

Alan frowned. "You engage in hypothetical discussions with your doctor?"

"Ah, no," Charlie mumbled, realising his mistake, "He's not _my_ doctor. He's just my friend. _'The Doctor'_ s what he calls himself. He's more like a… teacher, I guess."

"Was it a relevant point?" Alan asked.

Charlie shrugged. "It just made me wonder what conscious thought actually is. I mean, I know that everything that happens inside our brains just boils down to chemical reactions and electrical signals."

Alan nodded.

"But that doesn't mean there might not be something else involved. Something we can't really understand," Charlie added.

"Such as?" Alan questioned. "A soul?"

"I don't know."

"Are you religious?" Alan queried.

"I'm not," Charlie confessed.

"Nor I."

"No? Aren't most people kinda religious?" Charlie asked, reminding himself that he was still in the past.

"They claim to be. But I do not personally believe in a system that condemns my life."

Charlie frowned. "What do you mean?"

Alan's distant look suddenly returned to him.

"Nothing at all."

"What?"

"It doesn't matter."

"What were you going to say?" Charlie pressed him.

"There are parts of my life that I prefer remain secret from the casual observer," Alan said sharply.

Charlie nodded. "Yeah. Of course, sorry."

Alan observed Charlie's apologetic expression for a moment.

"There is something different about you, Charlie," he mused. "Something I've not seen in anyone in a long time." Alan offered him a slight smile, which looked rather uncertain of itself, as though he were stepping outside of his comfort zone. "I can't quite put my finger on what it is. Yet I find it intriguing."

"Oh?" Charlie uttered quietly, rather bemused.


	6. Great Minds II

The lights on the Doctor's ramshackle device began to pulse more intensely – he was close.

He paused, as he heard footsteps approach, and pressed himself back against the wall. He peered around the corner, into another corridor, and watched as a group of students ambled past, chatting idly.

He examined the device. No, the time traveller wasn't among them.

The Doctor scratched his ear impatiently, muttering to himself.

There was a large, heavy looking wooden door on the opposite side of the corridor, and as the Doctor approached it, his machine began to bleep wildly.

"Bingo," he breathed, silencing the device, and pocketing it.

Glancing around to make sure he wasn't being observed, the Doctor pushed his way into the old library.

It was a small room, with a short flight of steps leading up to a second floor. The room was populated with two dozen rows of shelves, crammed with old volumes, their covers and lettering peeling away with many decades of use.

The place was timeless. It probably hadn't changed since it was built.

There was a warm fire crackling in an old stone fireplace. Judging by the scorch marks, it had been started with an energy weapon.

Seated at a small table a short distance from the fire was a humanoid, making her way through a stack of books, at an impressive rate. She looked female, but the Doctor couldn't be certain.

There were a number of anachronisms about the way she was attired, badly hidden beneath a cream trench coat: some of her clothing didn't match the time period, as though she had been outfitted by an inexperienced costume designer in a historical drama.

As she flipped a page with a crisp rustle, the Doctor noticed a Time Agent's vortex manipulator peeking out from under her sleeve. The source of the time travel energy.

So this was their murderer.

It was unusual, then, the Doctor conceded, that her eyes seemed so full of curiosity as she read.

But she was not human, although she looked very much like one. There was something mechanical about the way she moved, and inclined her head.

"Hello?" the Doctor announced his presence.

The woman looked up, regarding the Doctor with a passive stare.

"I'm the Doctor."

"So I discovered," she responded.

She opened the book at the top of her pile without looking, and twisted it round towards the Doctor.

She scraped her chair back, and stood up.

As they circled the room, like birds of prey, maintaining a constant distance from one another, the Doctor glanced down at the open books at the table.

On one of the pages, there was a photograph of a 12th century tapestry, depicting a blue box – the TARDIS – surrounded by some giant snails.

"I remember that…" the Doctor muttered.

He glared at the woman.

"You've looked me up."

"You do not belong here," she said.

"Neither do you."

"Nor did you belong on the battlefield."

The Doctor frowned. "Ah, we've met before, then?"

"You don't belong anywhere," she continued.

The Doctor paused, clutching his jacket defensively.

"That's a rather scornful remark," he grunted.

"Your path is woven through history, yet you have no place in it."

The Doctor and the woman paced the perimeter of the room, without breaking eye contact, before either of them spoke.

"How did you find me?" she asked.

"I was tracking the energy traces about your… person," the Doctor explained, waving his contraption, before slipping it back into his pocket. "Vortex travel. Lights you up like a beacon."

"Then I must be more careful in future."

They stopped circling, and the Doctor placed himself between the door and the woman, blocking the only way out.

He regarded her for a moment.

"I would say…" the Doctor began, raising an accusatory finger, "that you're not human."

The woman narrowed her eyes, and the Doctor could hear her grinding her teeth.

"And I have to admit, you play the imitation game exceptionally well."

The woman's eyes were focused on him, burning with intense, but repressed anger.

"That makes two of us," she replied tersely.

The Doctor's smile was extinguished like a candle, and turned cold.

The pleasantries were over. Standing across the room was a killer, and the Doctor didn't have time for playing games.

"I'd say you were a war machine, built to serve the humans in the Myrox conflict," the Doctor deduced, "You're a robot foot soldier, programmed to follow orders, and kill the enemy, without placing your human masters in danger. Am I right…?"

"I have no masters," the woman growled, her voice quiet, but trembling with fury.

"No…" The Doctor gasped, clasping his hands together, and wringing them tightly. "You're not one of the AI units, are you? A machine capable of such intelligent thought, no-one could ever tell if they were human or not. One of the most feared war devices in Earth's history. Each unit so deadly, they were considered weapons of mass destruction – even when they were operating alone?"

"You know nothing about me," the woman retorted.

"I thought so," the Doctor grinned. _This explains the TARDIS' choice of location,_ he mused.

"I do not serve humans. I am not a mere machine!"

"But you are a killer?" the Doctor asserted.

Their eyes met for a moment. The question was thrown down, like a gauntlet; a challenge for a duel.

"No more a killer than you," the woman growled.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow.

"I can read it in your micro-expressions," she continued. "You have killed far more than I can calculate."

"You murdered that student," the Doctor reminded her.

"It was necessary. The human discovered my true identity. My presence here must remain unnoticed."

"You've not been very successful," the Doctor pointed out, his tone grave. "Tell me – you're from the future. What if it had been someone integral to the course of history? Your history?"

"He was not important," she stated.

The Doctor stopped, and locked the AI with a glare of quiet rage.

"I'm sorry. Do you want to run that by me again?"

The Doctor's harsh words dropped like cartridges from a gun, followed by a second's silence, in which the ringing of metal on wood would have been audible.

This AI was about to face the man who had earned the title of 'The Storm'. He was feared throughout the galaxy, even by the most terrifying creatures in existence. From creatures of primal fear which lurked in the darkness, to warriors fuelled by pure hatred.

The woman pulled an ill-fitting glove from her hand, revealing her energy weapon, and levelled it at the Doctor.

She spoke, with some bitterness in her voice.

"I wish to live in peace. I do not wish to fight the humans' war. If you are indeed the man I have read about, then you would understand that."

"Normally, I would be in favour of helping. But you're still a weapon," the Doctor reasoned. "You're dangerous. If you stay here, more people will die."

Undeterred, the woman closed the distance between them, and stared back at him. Her eyes were full of emotion; glimmering with anger.

"You will leave me in peace, Doctor, or I will destroy you."

"I can't allow that."

Enraged, the woman grabbed him by the collar, and threw him across the room.

The Doctor's sudden moment of weightlessness ceased when he crashed through the heavy wooden doors.

Momentarily dazed, he shook himself awake, and was met by the sight of the woman marching towards him, her weapon whining as it charged.

The Doctor scrambled out of the doorway as a bolt of white hot energy blasted through the space he had just vacated, instantly scorching the stone wall behind him.

The Doctor launched himself to his feet, and began running back the way he came.

The machine was not far behind - firing another shot, which sailed past the Doctor's ear, singeing his hair.

" _Soldiers_ …" he grumbled.


	7. A Problem

Charlie laughed, and Alan looked rather pleased with himself.

Alan had steered the conversation back towards physics, which Charlie immensely preferred to profound thought.

He was beginning to enjoy Alan's company, and he could tell, despite Alan's strangeness and awkward manner, he was noticeably more comfortable conversing with him.

"What's troubling you?" Alan asked suddenly.

"Hmm?" Charlie shrugged. "Nothing, really."

"It's obvious that you're lying," Alan insisted.

Charlie blinked, somewhat perturbed by Alan's blunt remark.

Alan caught himself, and reconsidered his words. "Perhaps you'd share it with me?"

Charlie shrugged a few times, before deciding to speak. He wasn't sure about opening up to someone after, what, twenty minutes of knowing someone?

But he had a gut instinct that Alan was someone who was loyal. And regardless, Alan was quite possibly his only friend here.

Or if he wasn't stuck in the nineteen thirties, and the Doctor would come back for him, then Alan was someone he'd never have to speak with again.

"I do have a bit of a problem," Charlie admitted. "Well, a few problems, actually."

"Oh good," Alan quickly responded, without any evidence of an inkling he was being insensitive, "I rather like problems. They make life a little more interesting, don't they?"

Charlie nodded, not sure that he was in agreement on that one. But he let it pass.

"You see, my friend went off to look for something."

"Your doctor?"

"Uh, the Doctor, yeah."

"What?" questioned Alan.

Charlie frowned, taking a moment to decipher Alan's question.

"What was he looking for? I'm not really sure."

"He didn't tell you?"

"No."

"Oh," grumbled Alan. "I hate how people do that. Talk, I mean, without saying anything at all."

Alan looked at him, earnestly, ascertaining whether Charlie would agree with him.

"No one ever says: _'I like spending time with you, I wish I could spend more time with you'._ "

His eyebrows furled in frustration, and befuddlement.

"Or, or… they say the exact opposite of what they mean. _'It's been nice'_ , when they really mean to say _'I've loathed every minute I've spent with you'_. Or _'pleased to meet you'_ , when they're really not."

Charlie found that he agreed with him. It was just that he had never heard anyone put it into words before.

Alan observed Charlie's expression as he ranted, and considered the possibility he had drawn a serious point off-topic, and tried to recover it.

"Did he say he was coming back?"

"Well, yeah, but it's like you were just saying. I'm not a hundred percent convinced he will."

Alan searched his eyes intently, as he listened.

"And I guess, if he doesn't come back… Well, I don't belong here."

"Yes… it does show, somewhat," Alan conceded. "I would almost say… but no, that would be preposterous."

Charlie was about to ask him what he meant, but they were interrupted when someone came charging up to them.

He was relieved to see that it was the Doctor.

The Doctor stopped short, noticing that they were no longer alone.

"Ah, Charlie! You've made a friend. That's good. What's less good is that I'm being chased by a murderous machine," the Doctor declared, hurriedly. "We need to run."

"What?" Charlie uttered in surprise.

"This is your friend?" guessed Alan.

"Uh, yes. I'd advise running as well," the Doctor suggested. "It's coming this way."

Charlie spotted a tall, slender woman, swathed in a long, pale coat. She was holding some sort of weapon, and was closing the distance between them at an incredible pace.

"Right!" he exclaimed, jumping to his feet, his relief short lived as he began chasing after the Doctor.

He was followed closely by Alan, who was, he was a little dismayed to see, able to run a lot quicker than him.

A huge fireball ripped up the turf ahead of them.

"Oh!" Alan exclaimed in alarm, stumbling as he regained his balance – and his composure.

The Doctor sped away in another direction, and Charlie was barely keeping up with him.

He threw a glance at the woman chasing them, and saw that she was alarmingly close. It encouraged him to push on a little faster.

"Why don't we split up?" shouted Alan.

The Doctor frowned, shooting an astounded expression at him.

"That's not an entirely terrible idea!" the Doctor shouted back, throwing his arm out. "You two go that way. I'll try to lead it away."

They dashed across the grass, and parted ways when they arrived at a large gothic archway, where there were two doors leading in opposite directions.

The Doctor took the left entrance, and Alan headed right, holding the door for Charlie, as he rushed to catch up with him.

"This way," urged Alan.

"I'm right behind you," Charlie assured him.

"Does this happen a lot with you two?" Alan asked, as they continued running, down a corridor.

"Yeah, it does a bit," Charlie managed to call back.

* * *

The Doctor halted, just long enough to make sure the AI was following him.

"Just for once, I'd like to meet a nice, friendly killer robot!" he remarked.

The woman scowled at him, and began to pound towards him, taking long, powerful strides.

The Doctor wound down half a dozen corridors, taking random turns, leading the AI away from Charlie and Alan. He doubled back a couple of times, just to be especially irritating.

Finally, the Doctor stopped, and whirled around, brandishing the sonic screwdriver.

As soon as the Doctor stopped, the woman stopped too, and regarded him for a moment, before raising her weapon.

"You appear to have a death wish, Doctor."

"So you _are_ going to kill me?" the Doctor confirmed.

She scanned him for a moment.

"Yes."

"Then kill me," the Doctor goaded her, shrugging offhandedly. "Do what you were made for."

She narrowed her eyes, insulted.

" _Made for?_ "

"You're a soldier. Programmed to kill."

"I am not a soldier," she swore. "I am not a slave."

"Then show me," the Doctor beseeched her.

After a moment's consideration, she lowered her weapon.

"I have no… desire to destroy you," she admitted.

The Doctor nodded, thankful she had changed her mind. Perhaps the machine would be more likely to cooperate with him?

"You are the Doctor," she stated. "You will leave here, and no-one will learn of my existence from you."

"That's good," the Doctor nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, I can do that."

"But the other two will not," she reasoned. "They will talk, and I will be exposed. I will have to destroy them."

The Doctor's shoulders dropped in resignation.

"Now, you see, you can't keep doing that!"

"Do not follow me. Go back to your ship."

"No," the Doctor growled.

"No?" she challenged him.

"No!" the Doctor griped. "I won't let you. You're a dangerous weapon! And you clearly don't value the life of another."

"Value? Why should I value the life of another, when they do not consider my life to be just as valuable?"

"There you go again!" roared the Doctor, waving his arms angrily. "You're playing the victim card. But that doesn't give you any justification for what you're doing. You don't care about these people. You hate them, because you've been subjected to hatred yourself."

"I do not hate them," the AI insisted. "I merely do not care for them."

"But if you care about your life," argued the Doctor, "if you care about life at all, then you care about _all_ life – regardless of what form it takes."

"I do not understand your logic."

"You have no regard for their lives! That's why you're dangerous to them. That's why I have to stop you."

"And how will you stop me?"

"With this," the Doctor suggested, flourishing the sonic screwdriver.

"That is a sonic disruptor," the woman stated acidly, "It will have no effect on my systems."

"No?" contested the Doctor.

The AI held his gaze for a moment longer, then simply turned, and left.

The Doctor cursed under his breath, pocketing the screwdriver, and took off after the machine.


	8. What You Were Made For

Alan led Charlie into a vast lecture theatre; scores of hard wooden benches fanned out from a raised stage.

They quickly shifted a heavy wooden lectern, and used it to barricade the door.

Alan picked out a hiding spot: behind a balustrade on one of the upper rows. They ducked beneath it, and held their breaths for a moment, aware that an irate robot with a very large weapon might burst into the room at any moment.

Charlie became conscious that Alan's shoulder was pressed against his, despite the fact that he could have chosen literally any other spot in the room to hide in.

His proximity seemed contradictory to his rather distant manner.

"What a remarkable life you must lead," Alan whispered.

"Yeah," Charlie breathed.

Alan's hair had fallen into his eyes, and he took a moment to brush it aside.

"Is everyone like you in the future?" he asked.

"What?" Charlie looked at him in alarm.

Alan ruminated on his conclusion for a moment, before explaining.

"I didn't believe it at first, but it's the only reasonable justification for your manner, and your… appearance."

"Well," Charlie began, smoothing the sleeve of his hoodie, wondering how he could have worked that out – and been so sure of it.

He stopped dead, when an echoing crash alerted them to the breach of their barricade.

They shared a worried glance, and remained silent.

"I know you are in here," the woman called.

Charlie held his breath. Would the machine be able to detect him breathing? Or could it simply see their heat signatures?

"You blocked the door from the inside, so I know you are in this room."

"I didn't consider that," Alan muttered, his face crumpling into a frown.

"We were kinda hoping it would have kept her out," Charlie retorted, under his breath.

"It would be simplest if you both show yourselves. I guarantee that I will find you."

The machine was probably right, Charlie realised, his heart pounding furiously.

He took a deep breath, and on an impulse, stood up.

Alan threw him a horrified glance. _What are you doing?_

"Wait!" he cried, thrusting his hands into the air.

The woman turned to him, weapon raised, but not firing – which was good.

She regarded him for a moment.

As far as Charlie was concerned, his options were: death, when the woman found their hiding place; or death, when he revealed his presence to it.

He'd gone with the second option. It seemed like the sort of thing the Doctor would do – and _he_ wasn't dead. At the very least, Charlie would prefer to know what motives this machine had for killing them.

"Why do you want to kill me?" he asked.

The machine regarded him with suspicion for a moment, before answering his question.

"Because you know of my existence. You know what I am."

Charlie frowned, nodding slowly, but keeping his eyes on the gun.

He knew that this was a machine, from what the Doctor had told him. But there was something different about it. If it was a machine, intent on killing him, then it would have no qualms about killing him on sight. It wasn't logical not to do so. This was an almost… emotional response?

" _'What you are?'_ I'm not sure that I do…"

She kept her eyes locked on him, but said nothing. She wanted him to keep talking.

"I mean, as far as I'm concerned, you're a woman, with a… a really weird gun." Charlie motioned towards the weapon, which was visibly an extension of the woman's arm.

"You are making this argument based on the knowledge that I am a machine," she responded.

Charlie looked sheepishly down at his feet. He caught Alan's eye, who was staring at him, deep in thought.

"Uh, yeah, I probably am," he admitted. "But I still don't understand why you want me dead."

Charlie hadn't been confident in his decision to confront the machine from the moment he'd stood up. He was certain that it showed. His voice was wavering, and he was sure that he sounded terrified. He needed to try and fix that.

"If I am discovered, my weapons, and other capabilities will be discovered also," the woman explained, "I will be hunted down, or attacked by this planet's military forces. Not only would that result in my termination, it would also be paradoxical. Humans would have access to technology they will not be capable of producing for hundreds of years."

Her eyes flickered towards him. "It would also result in the deaths of more humans."

"Okay…?" Charlie nodded, showing that he understood. The machine certainly made a good argument.

"That is why any human with knowledge of my existence as a machine – and one that does not belong in this time period – must be eliminated."

"I could promise not to tell," Charlie offered. "I mean, I don't want anyone to die, either."

"I cannot take your word for that. You are human. You are unreliable," she stated.

Charlie frowned. He needed to attack her argument from another angle.

"Ah," Charlie lowered his hands, raising an index finger to back up his point. "So you don't want anyone to know you don't belong in this time period? You must have worked out that I don't belong here, too?"

She inclined her head, indicating that she had indeed arrived at this conclusion.

"Then we have the same problem. But that's easily fixed."

"How?"

"The Doctor – that man I was with. We can leave with him. No-one else here will know about you."

"The Doctor will not leave, and allow me to remain. Nor will he take me anywhere else. The grounds for your argument are invalid."

"What do you mean?"

"The Doctor would see my existence terminated. He would kill me."

Charlie frowned, his disbelief exposed.

"I don't think he would."

"Nonetheless, you must be eliminated."

She raised her weapon, and swung it towards him again.

Before Charlie could protest, Alan leapt up in front of him.

"No! This defies all logic!"

The woman did not adjust her aim.

"He has given you a perfectly valid reason for you not to kill him, yet you choose to regardless!" Alan argued.

Charlie pulled him out of the woman's line of fire, and pushed in front of him.

"Look, you don't need to kill _him_ ," he countered. "He's just some dumb guy no-one will listen to."

"I resent that!" Alan protested, trying to shove him out of the way.

"Not helping!" Charlie hissed at him.

The woman frowned, as she watched Charlie and Alan struggle against each other. Charlie was successfully keeping Alan behind him. It was as though they were fighting to decide which of them would die first. And illogically, they were both trying to make sure it wasn't the other.

Eventually, Alan gave in, but it was clear that he wasn't happy about it.

She found it confusing. Her weapon would kill both of them instantly. Yet they were both trying to protect each other.

"Okay!" Charlie finally decided. "So we both have secrets. Things we want to keep hidden. You, me, even him."

He gestured towards Alan.

"This is not a case in favour of your continued existence," the woman informed him.

"Why not?" Charlie contested. "You're acting like you don't care, but I can see you do."

Charlie couldn't. But he was certainly hoping.

"You don't want to kill us. I get it. You're looking out for yourself."

Charlie frowned, struggling to gauge a reaction.

"But maybe, we don't want anything to happen to you either. We want to help," Charlie promised.

The machine's passive expression twisted into a grimace.

"You are merely saying this to save yourselves."

"Oh, very probably," interrupted a familiar voice. "But that doesn't mean it isn't true."


	9. I Am Alive

Charlie let slip a relieved smile when he saw the Doctor vault over the remains of the door, and stride into the lecture theatre.

He leapt onto the stage, and with a flourish – which looked as though he was about to re-enact a scene from _Hamlet_ – he roared:

"Now, the question of the hour is: can this machine really think?"

The machine in question twisted round, and glared at him, whilst keeping her weapon squarely trained on Alan and Charlie.

"I don't mean to be critical, Doctor," Charlie called down, his hands still raised, "but are you sure _now_ is the best time?"

The Doctor shrugged. "It's all right. She won't kill you."

"I'd love to say that puts me completely at ease…" Charlie muttered.

"Well, evidently, it does. You've already relaxed," the Doctor pointed out.

"I…" Charlie stammered.

He quietly admitted that the Doctor was right. He was already feeling less afraid – the Doctor's presence was immensely reassuring.

"I have no wish to destroy you, Doctor," the machine stated, a tone of urgency, and what sounded like irritation, audible in her voice, "or these humans, but I am left with no alternative."

"Wrong!" the Doctor yelled, triumphantly. "There are loads of alternatives! You don't have to resort to your military training all the time."

"You have a more feasible alternative?" she queried.

"Yeah," the Doctor grunted, as though his more feasible alternative was blatantly obvious.

He sighed, because clearly it wasn't.

"We're in a lecture theatre! Why not do a little bit of thinking? We might learn something."

The Doctor whirled around, gesturing at the space all around him. Finally, he thrust his thumb towards the wall behind him.

"I'm sorry, I didn't have time to put together a powerpoint presentation, so we'll have to do without."

"What is that man babbling about?" Alan asked.

"I… I'm really not sure I can explain," Charlie whispered back.

The machine considered the Doctor's suggestion for a moment, scrutinising them all.

The Doctor didn't wait for her to make a decision, and began setting his plan in motion.

"Come on down, Charlie," he called, waving at him.

Charlie immediately did as instructed, feeling a little ridiculous, as though the Doctor had just turned this entire proceeding into a game show.

"Thinking?" the machine questioned.

"Of course," the Doctor said, crouching down at the edge of the stage, between Charlie and the machine. "Think of this as a little conference."

He pointed at them in turn.

"On one side, we have a machine. A soldier, but has it got a soul?"

The woman ignored his remark, her lips pressed firmly shut.

"And on the other side, a human, and…" he acknowledged Alan's existence, "another one. They belong on this world. They're capable of an intelligent and mature discussion."

He nodded at them, just to make sure that they were indeed capable of sentient thought.

Charlie shot him a confused expression.

He wasn't entirely sure what the Doctor was planning, but it seemed like a good idea to roll with it.

"But how can a machine think?" Alan asked.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow, regarding Alan for a moment.

The woman, on the other hand, raised her weapon at him, the fury broiling behind her eyes.

Alan's jaw dropped, and he raised his hands in surrender.

"On second thoughts…"

The Doctor jumped down from the stage, and glared at the three of them.

"We're not here to bandy insults and threats. So put your weapon away, and we'll have a _little chat_."

The Doctor's voice was cold, and carried a great deal of weight. His words held the power of the disappointed parent; the reproachful teacher.

Neither Alan, nor the machine, could hold the Doctor's judgemental gaze. Even Charlie, who hadn't made any aggressive moves, felt a little ashamed of himself.

"The result of your debate will directly influence what I decide to do with you," the Doctor warned the AI.

"You are putting me on trial?" she realised.

"Naturally. You're responsible for deaths here, as well as countless more on the battlefield," the Doctor growled.

Her steely gaze remained uncompromising. For a moment, Charlie was sure she was going to refuse, and kill them all.

"I am arguing in defence of my life?"

"Yes."

"And you are the judge?" she challenged him.

"You don't believe I have the right to judge you," the Doctor reasoned. "Perhaps you're right. But what about these two humans?"

The AI was familiar with the Doctor's reputation. This was a man who had defeated whole armies without firing a single shot. The effects of his actions could be witnessed throughout history. He wielded an enormous amount of power, and respect – and he had earned it. She decided that on this occasion, it would be wise to heed his words.

She placed her weapon stiffly at her side, and gave a curt nod.

"Very well."

The Doctor turned to Charlie, and he hastily agreed.

"Convince _them_ ," the Doctor told her.

Satisfied, the Doctor stepped back.

"For once, I might do what my people are supposed to do. Observe, and not interfere."

Once again, his mood turned in an instant. His dark, brooding expression faded, and he threw Charlie a quick grin.

Diving into a chair, the Doctor loudly opened a packet of salt and vinegar flavoured crisps. He waved a hand dismissively, when he realised he was still the centre of attention.

"You lot go ahead. I'm just going to sit and watch."

Charlie looked at him, at a loss for words, until the Doctor nodded at him: _go on!_

"Okay. Uh…"

He looked over at the woman, who was waiting patiently for him to speak.

"So, help me understand?" Charlie began. "You're a machine?"

"Yes," she replied, acidly.

"But you're kind of alive?"

"I am alive!" she spat.

"But how can you be sure that you're alive, if you're a machine?"

"The same could be said of you."

Charlie could sense her irritation. He really didn't want to provoke her, because it probably wouldn't end well for any of them.

"Okay. Okay, yeah. Fair point. So there's no real way of proving if one is alive," he hastily added.

"I'd be inclined to disagree," Alan commented. "I'm sure there must be some scientific test that could determine…"

"Yeah, well, we don't really have time to discuss that right now," hissed Charlie.

"Oh," Alan grunted, scowling, and shrinking back into the sidelines.

"Where are you from?" Charlie asked the woman.

"I have no memory of where I am from," she replied tersely. "I was made for battle."

"You're a soldier?"

"I _was_ ," she corrected him, "I was an unwilling soldier, in a war between two races I have no affiliation with."

She considered her argument for a moment.

"But no quarrel with, either," she added.

"So you came here to get away from that war?" Charlie guessed.

"That's correct."

"But why did you come here?"

"It was not my intention to come here."

"Then… how did you get here? Because you're from the future, yes? Do you have a time machine?"

She pushed her sleeve up, revealing a leather wristband. She flipped a panel open, revealing a small screen and keypad.

"I acquired this technology. I used it to escape my world, and time."

She pressed a button on the device. Charlie readied himself, in case something happened, and he had to make a move. The device bleeped, but did nothing.

"This is how I arrived here. But it was damaged, so I cannot leave."

Charlie nodded. She sounded truthful, so he decided to believe her.

"I just want to live," she implored him. "But I cannot live here in peace. If I am discovered, I will be experimented upon. I will be tortured!"

The machine was becoming very emotional. Charlie wasn't sure if it was an act, designed to provoke a sympathetic response, of if it was genuine. Why would she fear torture? Did she feel pain?

"May I take a look at your device?" Alan asked.

The woman unstrapped the vortex manipulator, and tossed it to Alan, with precision – and he was able to catch it easily.

"I doubt you will learn anything from it. Its technology does not yet exist."

"It's certainly very unconventional," Alan mused, inspecting the casing.

Charlie watched him run his fingers around the plastic.

He turned back to the woman.

"What if we help you get somewhere else? Another world? Another time?" Charlie suggested.

He looked over at the Doctor.

"Can we do that?"

The Doctor shrugged, speaking with a mouthful of crisps.

"I'm an impartial observer. It's your call."

"Where would you take me?" the woman interjected. "Volag-Noc?"

"I don't know where that is," Charlie admitted.

"It is a prison."

"Oh. No! No, I wouldn't."

"Why?" she challenged.

"Why?"

"Why _wouldn't_ you send me to a prison?"

"Because…" Charlie faltered. He wasn't sure that he followed the machine's argument.

"She's making a good point," the Doctor admitted. "She's trying to convince you that she is a real, living being. If you believe that's true, you should be holding her accountable for her actions."

The AI nodded at him, acknowledging his accurate assumption.

"That way, she is ultimately responsible for the people she's killed. Otherwise, she's simply a device someone else has programmed."

Charlie took a moment to collate his thoughts.

He was feeling rather confused, and a little flustered. He wasn't really prepared for such momentous decision making. And not for the first time, he felt that he might be in a little over his head.

He was trying to act in everyone's best interests – and that included making sure people here were safe. How could he offer to take her to another world, if she would endanger the people there?

He tried to consider the argument from her point of view.

The machine wasn't trying to convince them she should live _here_ , she was just fighting for her right to live. And a right to live meant staying alive.

Charlie glanced over at Alan, who had prised the vortex manipulator apart, and was now examining the internal workings – spread out across a desk – chewing his nails as he concentrated.

It seemed Alan was way too preoccupied with the device to offer him any suggestions. The decision which would decide the machine's fate rested solely on his shoulders.

He thought back to the dead body he and the Doctor had found in the university grounds.

This machine, person – whatever – was responsible.

"Okay," Charlie decided. "I'm prepared to accept that you're a living being, as long as you're prepared to accept the consequences of what you've done."

"And what would those consequences be?"

"I…" Charlie was stumped once again.

"What consequences do you believe I should face?"

"I don't know," Charlie admitted, tugging at his hair in frustration. "But I'm trying to help you."

The woman's fierce expression softened, as she considered his words.

"This, I do not understand," she admitted. "You care about what happens to me, despite the fact that I have attempted to destroy you."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow, intrigued by her understanding.

"Yeah," Charlie looked her in the eyes. "Because you _didn't_ kill me. And I think… I think that if you were just a machine – if you were just programmed to kill, I wouldn't still be talking to you."

The woman broke his gaze, unable to respond to his observation.

"I… I did not understand. I was… compelled not to," she muttered.

"What do you mean 'compelled'?" Charlie asked. "Are you talking about… a feeling? Like… an emotion?"

The machine looked up at him, unsure of itself.

"Emotion…?"

Her eyes widened. "Yes, that must be it. Emotion."

"If you feel emotion… how could you only be a machine?" Charlie reasoned. "What do you feel?"

"I feel… remorse," she uttered. "I should not have…"

She clasped her hand to her mouth, and her eyes searched the floor.

"I should not have done the things I have done."

She looked up at Charlie, her eyebrows twisted in regret. "I am truly sorry."

Charlie nodded at her. He wasn't sure how to respond. He still wasn't a hundred percent certain that he could trust her.

"I have to… repent for my actions," she resolved. "That is the consequence I must face. I must make amends for what I have done."

The Doctor regarded the development with keen interest. At last, they seemed to be making progress.

"I should probably let you know," Alan spoke up, "I have completed my work on this machine."

Charlie looked at him, impressed.

Alan stepped forward, and presented it to him. The casing was still in fragments, but the screen now showed a jumble of numbers.

How he could be sure it was working, Charlie had no idea. Once again, he was taken aback by Alan's confidence in his intellect.

"How did you achieve this?" the woman asked, approaching them.

"Although I don't fully understand how the machine itself works, it seems to operate using fundamental mathematics," Alan explained. "The numbers on this panel, the actual significance of which eludes me,"

"The activation code," the woman informed him.

"The numbers give the illusion of random oscillation," Alan observed. "But this clearly isn't the case."

"Machines can't generate truly random numbers," Charlie recalled.

Alan took a moment to digest his words, and continued.

"Each of these numerals is actually following a different sequence. But each of these sequences must have had a starting integer."

Charlie frowned, failing to understand exactly how Alan had worked any of this out so fast. He stared at the flashing numbers on the display.

"I guess."

"The activation code constantly changes upon entry. It is designed to mask the code, so that neither machines, nor human minds can decode it," the woman explained.

"Hmm," Alan grunted. "It was simply a case of decoding each of these sequences, and re-entering this… activation code."

"That is incredible," the woman muttered, stunned.

"He's good," the Doctor professed.

Alan offered Charlie a sliver of a smile.

"This machine is remarkable." His voice bristled with excitement. "I should like to have a little time to study this."

"Better not," the Doctor chipped in. "We wouldn't want our friend here to be the man who invented computing. That's not supposed to happen for…"

He checked his watch.

"Oh…"

The Doctor wrinkled his nose, and looked up again.

In this moment, whilst the Doctor was distracted, the machine saw her chance, and made a move.

She lunged for the device, but Alan refused to relax his grip on it.

"What are you…?" Alan didn't have time to finish his question.

The AI quickly pressed a combination of buttons, and activated the device.

Seeing what was about to happen, Charlie grabbed it as well.

"No!" the Doctor yelled, launching out of his chair, as they were pulled from the room.

Bolts of electricity coursed through Charlie's body. It felt as though he was being pummelled from all angles.

In the split second the vortex manipulator took to transport them halfway across the universe, Charlie saw the faces of Alan and the machine, glowing with an ethereal mask of energy.

An impossible kaleidoscope of colour assaulted his eyeballs, as the vortex swirled all around them.

As soon as the roaring pressure subsided, he was dumped on the rocky ground, and the leather wristband slipped from his grasp.

He gasped for air, and struggled to push himself up off the ground. It was as though he had just done a hundred press-ups. The sudden time travel had completely sapped his strength.

The same had happened to Alan. But the machine, of course, didn't need air, and stood up immediately.

"No…" she uttered, drinking in their surroundings. "No!"


	10. Man or Machine?

With more effort than he thought should have been necessary, Charlie sat up.

They were bathed in a soft glow from a blood red sky. There was a mist in the air, obscuring the view for more than a few feet around them.

Here, the ground was barren. Broken branches speared the shattered earth. The rocks were cracked and crumbling.

Wherever they had ended up, it had the vitality of a desert. And the humidity – it was scorching hot.

Charlie had only been here for a minute, and already his T-shirt was plastered to his back.

"What have you done?" he spluttered, but the machine didn't hear.

Instead, he looked over at Alan. With a sudden lurch of realisation, he saw that Alan was freaking out.

"What… what just…?" he was babbling.

"Ah," Charlie began, wondering how he could explain, as Alan staggered to his feet, the world spinning around him.

He wasn't sure what he could explain, as he had no idea where they were.

"Hey, Alan, hey – you're okay," he urged, grabbing his shoulders.

"The sky… this isn't…" Alan spouted, ignoring Charlie.

"Alan, calm down. Take a few deep breaths."

"We've travelled. We've travelled across the stars! We're on another planet," he exclaimed. "Another planet!"

His eyes locked with Charlie's, his blue irises ablaze with wonder.

He noticed Charlie's concerned expression, and quickly came to his senses.

"Sorry. I'm making rather a fool of myself."

Alan coughed up his embarrassment, and straightened his tie.

"You're okay, yeah?"

"Yes, I believe so."

"Good. Good!" Charlie encouraged him. "You're doing really well!"

Alan shot him an irked expression. "There's no need to be patronising."

"All right! I figured you've never been to an alien world before."

"And you have?" Alan retorted. His eyebrows furled. "Oh. You have."

Alan studied him a moment, and Charlie returned his gaze, his eyebrow twitching into a frown; his unease apparent at the prospect of Alan's close scrutiny.

The woman released a cry of anguish, and they looked over.

She seemed as horrified as they did. Her escape had clearly not gone to plan.

"NO!" she screamed into the air.

Charlie ventured up to her, keeping a cautious distance. He no longer felt safe, especially now the Doctor wasn't here. He wasn't convinced that she wouldn't just kill them.

"What is it?"

She turned to him, her eyes wide, panic-stricken.

"We're back."

"Where?"

"The war. The battlefield."

She seemed devastated. Charlie felt a small amount of pity for her, but didn't know how to console her.

"Can't we go somewhere else?" he suggested.

"The device has burned out," the machine replied, her voice broken.

She threw it at him. Charlie caught it, and examined it.

The screen was dead. It was a blackened, smouldering shell. There was no way they'd be able to repair it.

They were trapped here.

A distant explosion rocked the ground, and shook Charlie's attention back to the present – where they were, and when.

"Wait, how close are we to the fighting?"

"We're on the battlefield," the machine growled.

"The humans and their war machines are that way," she pointed into the mist. "The Myrox settlements are in the opposite direction."

"Is there anywhere we can go?"

"Go?"

"Where we'll be safe."

"We are in the middle of a warzone," the machine uttered. "Nowhere is safe."

Alan shot him a concerned look. It took Charlie a moment to realise that the both of them should be a lot more scared than they were.

A war in the future meant deadlier weapons: more accurate, and more likely to kill them.

They were as good as dead, unless they could get out of there.

Charlie urged the machine to get the three of them away from the fighting, but she seemed to have lost all hope. She no longer cared about her own survival, let alone theirs.

* * *

Within a few minutes of being motionless, they were surrounded by soldiers.

A dozen humanoid robots, each pointing weapons at the woman.

They were machines, but they were nowhere near as lifelike as the woman. They had blank faces, like mannequins: rigid and expressionless.

They didn't have eyes, or anything that resembled eyes; just a hard white shell.

Charlie wondered how they could see: whether they had infrared sensors, or sonar to build up a 3D image of their surroundings.

Charlie quickly ended his train of thought, realising that trying to determine the workings of robots that were about to kill them wasn't the best use of brainpower.

Nor did they have proper mouths. They had grilles, covering an amplifier.

"The rogue machine will be destroyed," one droned.

"No," the woman growled, taking a defensive stance.

"The order is not negotiable."

Ah, thought Charlie. This was the reaction he'd expect from a programmed machine.

"The rogue machine will be destroyed," another repeated.

In unison, the robots raised their weapons, and opened fire.

Charlie and Alan threw themselves into the ground.

There was a hail of laser fire, and fragments rained down upon them.

When Charlie dared to raise his head, he saw that the woman was the only thing left standing. The robots had been blasted to pieces.

"I am not a machine!" the woman yelled.

"I'm real," she breathed.

Charlie stood up, and stared at her for a moment. Her eyes were tired. He had seen tired eyes like that before – his own. He knew exactly how she felt. And for the first time, he truly believed that she did _feel_ something.

"You destroyed them all," Alan observed, examining one of the fallen robots. He prodded at it, and found that the plastic was molten, and burned his fingers.

"Ow. Idiot."

He quickly looked up, to check no-one had noticed. Charlie's attention was focused on the machine. His expression was that of empathy. His glistening eyes were rather sad, but also shining with kindness.

Alan had only seen one person look that way. A knot tightened in his stomach, as it brought back a painful memory.

He screwed his eyes shut, trying to force the thoughts out of his mind, along with the emptiness that accompanied it.

Charlie took a step closer to the woman. Yes, she was dangerous, but he no longer believed that she would try to hurt him.

She had made some very terrible mistakes, but she was beginning to see that. Her reactions were emotional, and almost human.

Her programming was more like a mental illness. She was someone who needed help, not punishment.

"I am sorry," she told him, "My actions have brought you to your deaths."

"It's not your fault," Charlie assured her. "Not really."

Her eyebrows arched in confusion. She wanted him to be right.

Charlie looked down at her waist, noticing a large, bubbling gash in her side.

"You're hurt," he realised.

"My power cell has been damaged, but it will not destroy me," she muttered. "It will need repair. Perhaps I am more a metal machine than a living being after all."

Charlie shook his head.

"You're a machine. Yeah, you've been programmed to do things. Things that… I don't think you actually want to do. You're a machine, but you're alive. You're real."

"Am I, though? Are my thoughts real?"

The woman dropped to her knees, her lip quivering.

"My thoughts are not my own. I'm not worthy of your… sympathy."

She began to sob, and wiped away her tears. She stared at her hand, scrutinising the liquid in disbelief.

"Maybe, a machine _can_ think," Charlie resolved. "Maybe we were wrong. Maybe I was wrong. Made mistakes."

The woman looked up at him, despairing.

"And you were wrong," he continued. "You made mistakes, too."

Charlie knelt beside her, shooting her a reassuring half-smile.

"And that's how we learn. Learn to make better decisions – decide what's right. Maybe not even what _is_ right. Just what we _believe_ is right."

The woman was too upset to speak.

"But… doesn't that make us real?" Charlie reasoned. "Responsible for our actions. Learning from mistakes. Because you care. You care what happens to other people."

"That makes me real?" The woman's shimmering eyes were begging him to tell her the truth.

Charlie shrugged.

"That makes you real to me."

The machine smiled, which Charlie was pleased to see.

Her smile faltered, when she became aware of it.

"I don't understand. I tried to kill you, and yet you have… forgiven me?"

"Yes," Charlie admitted.

"You speak with emotion. You make decisions based on emotion. But emotion… it fluctuates. It is… happy, I think. And sad. At the same time."

"Yeah," Charlie agreed. "It doesn't make any sense to me, either."

The woman smirked.

Charlie frowned. He realised that he had been thinking of her as a machine – he didn't know what else to call her.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"My name?" she gaped at him, astonished.

"Yeah. You must have a name. And I don't mean a model number, or anything."

"I was not given a name. I was AI unit, designation K."

"Kay?" Charlie suggested. "Kai?"

"Kai," the woman repeated. "Yes, I like that."

She peered up at him, and glanced over at Alan.

"And you? What do I name you?"

"I'm Charlie," he told her, "and he's Alan."

She looked at Alan, her brows furrowing as her eyes scanned him, as he returned a quizzical expression.

"Alan?" she queried. She looked up again at Charlie, her eyes wide.

"Now, I understand what the Doctor meant. About the value of life."

She laughed. "Alan! And Charlie!"

Her grin dropped, her features revealing her dismay. "I almost… I-I-I…"

Kai froze, her last syllable caught in a loop, before ending in an electronic gargle.

Charlie frowned. "Kai?"

She didn't respond.

"Kai?"

He turned to Alan for help. He scampered over.

"I think she's…"

She was gone.

Charlie sank to the ground. Empty.

"Do you think she was really alive?" Alan asked. "Or just imitating a human exceptionally well?"

"I don't know," Charlie grunted. "I thought she was alive. But I don't know. Maybe she was just acting human."

He didn't want to believe that, but now that she was gone, her power failed, he couldn't be certain. If there was a spark of life within her programming, it was gone. Erased. Deleted. Dead.

Alan saw Charlie's dejection, and did his best to console him.

"Are we not all actors?"

Charlie looked at him, puzzled.

"We mask parts of our true selves. Try to change who we appear to be, so that others accept us?"

"Yeah."

He waved his hand indifferently. "We should go. Find some shelter."

Alan nodded.

"I think you're right."


	11. Alan's Secret

Charlie and Alan carefully picked their way across the war-torn landscape.

They were fairly certain they were skirting around the edges of a skirmish. But thankfully, they didn't come across any more soldiers.

They found a ruined building to hide in, just before the sky turned dark. The roof had fallen in, and they could see the stars. Alien stars, Charlie remembered.

Even with the sun disappearing, it was still humid, so they were still warm. It was just as well, because Charlie didn't really know how to light a fire.

He was sat up against the remains of a wall, watching Alan, as he picked at the vortex manipulator.

"What are you doing?" Charlie asked him, after a while.

"I'm trying to fix it," he returned.

"I can see that," Charlie muttered. "But I don't think you can."

"I _will_ ," Alan retorted sharply, throwing him a dark look.

Sweat plastered his messy dark hair to his forehead, and he was hunched over the scattered parts of the device. He looked goblin-esque – like Gollum, about to hiss ' _my precioussss…_ '

"I'm sorry," Charlie tried to reason with him.

"I have to save him!"

He was wild-eyed, and desperate.

Charlie felt sorry for him, but he quite didn't understand why he was so determined to fix the thing. One look at the device told him that there was no way they were using it again.

"Who?" he asked.

"My friend," Alan replied, without offering further explanation.

Charlie had to prompt him to explain.

"What are you talking about?"

Alan threw a piece of burnt plastic down in irritation.

"This is a time machine! We've journeyed to the future. Not that it feels it." Alan frowned. "This is what I imagined the Great War to have been like. All this dust, and dirt."

His attention snapped back to Charlie.

"I can use this to go back. Change what happened!"

Charlie bit his lip. "Right…"

"If you could go back and save the only person you ever cared about, wouldn't you?" Alan argued.

Charlie blinked. "Well, yes…"

"Then let me fix this blasted thing!"

"No, I understand," Charlie insisted. "But I'm sorry, you can't. It's broken!"

Alan, his eyes burning with tears, cast a final, desolate gaze over the shattered pieces.

"I don't understand how _any_ of this works."

Charlie sighed. He didn't want to see Alan this upset.

"If it's any consolation, I don't either."

"We're stranded here," Alan concluded, after a while.

"Yeah," Charlie agreed. "And I don't think the Doctor will be able to rescue us."

"Your friend? How would he be able to help?"

"He has a time machine as well. But there's no way he's gonna know where we are. We could be anywhere in time and space, and I have no way of contacting him!"

* * *

Eventually, Alan abandoned the machine, and sat down beside Charlie.

Alan glanced at him for a moment, as though he was about to speak, but was struggling with the words.

"I apologise for my outburst earlier."

Charlie glanced at him. Alan's words had taken an inordinate amount of effort to say. Unless, of course, he was actually trying to say something else.

"Hey, don't worry about it," Charlie muttered glumly, prodding at the dusty ground with a gnarled twig.

"You're probably right," Alan agreed.

"Yeah?"

"No one ever listens to me. I'm just a guy – a dumb guy at that."

Charlie took a moment to recall his remark, when he was trying to defend Alan at their apparent moment of death in the lecture theatre.

"Oh, that?" Charlie uttered. "I wasn't… that was just a bluff. I was trying to stop Kai from… you know."

"But nobody ever does," Alan maintained. "Nobody ever listens to anyone."

"I do," Charlie protested. "I'm listening to you now."

"Yes," Alan conceded.

"And you're not dumb," Charlie told him. "Seriously? You're a heck of a lot more intelligent than I am."

"That certainly is a compliment," mused Alan. "But if I hadn't solved that little puzzle with the code, we wouldn't be in this mess."

Charlie shook his head.

"We'd just be in a different one."

Alan grunted.

* * *

They spent a while staring up at the sky in silence. Watching the stars shimmer above them, as the alien world they were on span by.

"I used to look up at the stars with him," Alan spoke quietly.

Alan's eyes were distant. It seemed the thought of his friend plagued him.

"It used to provoke the most incredible conversation.

"What do _you_ think?" Alan looked at him, perhaps hoping to recreate such a conversation. "When you look up at the stars?"

Charlie took a moment to consider the question.

"The universe is so vast. Infinite numbers of galaxies, filled with solar systems, each with suns, and planets." He frowned. "It's a bigger picture. Everything you do is of no passing interest to the universe as a whole.

"We're all so… insignificant," he muttered sullenly, "A speck of dust riding in the wind. Our lives, short, wasted… unimportant."

"I disagree," Alan whispered excitedly. "Does the sight not fill you with a sense of wonder? That there is so much of the universe that we cannot possibly begin to understand? In its infinite complexities, there is always the possibility of discovering something impossible. Something that defies nature. Rebels against its patterns, and its laws."

Alan's enthusiasm, although quiet and self-contained, was rather infectious.

Charlie realised that this is exactly what the Doctor was showing him. _Had_ been showing him. Everything was important. Everyone. Even a machine.

"Maybe you're right," Charlie decided. "No!"

Alan frowned, a little taken aback."

"I hope you _are_ right." Charlie grinned at him.

"Perhaps you dream of a better world, too?" Alan conjectured. "Some utopian paradise? Where we may all live as ourselves?"

"Ourselves?" Charlie questioned.

"Where we don't have to hide."

Charlie gave him a querying look, wondering what Alan was getting at.

"I must say, I did enjoy our conversation earlier," Alan admitted. "You seem to… accept things, when I tell you about myself."

Charlie nodded. "I'd like to think I'm open-minded, yeah."

"A secret… if I may share it with you?"

"Yeah…?"

"I'm a… homosexual."

Charlie felt a pang in his gut, and he probably lost full control of his facial expressions for a moment, judging by Alan's study of his reaction.

"You're gay? Oh," Charlie muttered.

Alan narrowed his eyes. "Gay? No… perhaps? You seem a little uncomfortable? Should I not have revealed that…?"

"No, no it's not that," Charlie protested.

"I don't know what your views are, in the future."

"No, I'm not judging you."

"It's probably frowned upon even to admit it…" Alan grumbled.

"There's nothing wrong with… caring about the people you care about," Charlie fumbled with his words. "Where I'm from – that is, the future, I guess – most people don't have a problem…"

Alan's eyes were shining, hopeful.

"Your world must be wondrous to live in."

"It's not exactly your utopian paradise…"

Their conversation was cut short, when a pair of boots stomped up to them.

Alan and Charlie followed them up to the owner: a human soldier, armed with a weapon, pointed straight at them.

"Get up," he ordered.


	12. Back to the Future

The Doctor stood up, ignoring the dust that tarnished his clothes.

He made sure that Ariana, the young Myrox girl, was unharmed. Thankfully, she was okay.

She was an innocent child, her world destroyed by a conflict she couldn't comprehend. He needed to get her to the TARDIS – and to safety.

Before he'd had a chance to escape, some military pudding-brains had rocked up in their silly mystery machine, demanding to know where their super-intelligent, self-aware AI killing machine had gotten to.

He couldn't be bothered to explain to these idiots that she had stolen a piece of time travel technology, and hidden in the past, until he and Charlie had shown up. He'd followed the energy trace from the vortex manipulator back to the Myrox homeworld. He was horrified to discover it being mercilessly blasted apart by the invading humans.

He needed to find Charlie, and Alan, but he couldn't just stand by and watch – especially when there were children caught in the bombardment.

The human who was bossing the others about, presumably entitled because he was a bigger idiot than everyone else, addressed him, with some boringly generic questions. The old _'who are you, what are you doing here?'_

The Doctor wanted to throw a snarky reply back in his face. It's amazing how quick you get with the sarcastic remarks when you've had the practice.

Ultimately, he decided against it, in favour of making sure nothing happened to Ariana.

She grabbed his hand, clearly scared, so the Doctor tried to gently reassure her, whilst the soldiers bombarded him with more questions.

"Where is the K unit?" Lead Idiot demanded.

"She's gone," the Doctor enlightened them.

Idiot #1 threw him a disbelieving look.

"How is that possible? It had no such orders."

 _It._ No wonder the machine hated these people.

" _She_ won't answer to you any more, 'commander'."

The Doctor enjoyed his contemptuous retort, but chose his words carefully. These soldiers almost certainly wouldn't think twice about shooting them.

"We need to find that AI unit."

The Doctor turned to Ariana, and winked.

"I'm already on it," he whispered to her.

"Reynolds, take the old man in for questioning. The Myrox girl, too."

Idiot #2, Idiot #1's subordinate, saluted. Idiot #2 was obviously not quite as idiotic as Idiot #1, but still an idiot for doing whatever he said.

People who unquestioningly obeyed orders riled him almost as much as the person who dreamt them up.

"Come with me," she ordered.

"No," the Doctor said, defiantly staring down Idiot #2.

It wasn't a request, or a plea in protest, or even an order. It was a statement of fact.

* * *

Unfortunately, the Doctor's refusal was largely ignored, and he and Ariana were both shoved into the back of the Idiotmobile. He kept Ariana close at all times, making sure nobody so much as laid a finger on her.

He was escorted into an overly-equipped war room.

The Doctor wasn't paying attention to most of the questions that were being asked of him.

He'd lent Ariana the sonic screwdriver to keep her occupied, whilst the humans repeated orders at each other.

The sonic was set to project impressive light displays at the ceiling, depicting the TARDIS' star maps of the universe.

The Doctor's ear picked up one of the soldiers informing the commander that they'd 'found it.'

He couldn't remember whether it was Idiot #4 or Idiot #5. He'd already lost track.

"Ah, excellent," the Doctor interrupted their conversation, with a friendly smile. "Let me speak to them."

"Them?" Idiot #1 exclaimed.

"Yes…" the Doctor explained. "You found two humans nearby."

Wherever the AI had ended up, Charlie and Alan would be with her.

"How do you know that?"

"It's why I'm here. I came to rescue them. I got attacked by your mad robots on the way, and had to rescue an _innocent child_ from a warzone."

Idiot #1 grunted dismissively.

"They're being taken in for questioning."

"Let me see them."

"No."

The Doctor sighed.

"Here's what's going to happen. You're going to take me to them, or you are seriously going to regret it."


	13. The Costs of War

Alan and Charlie were escorted into a medical bay.

At least, he hoped it was a medical bay. It looked more like a workshop, with bulky drilling machines and vicious cutting tools lining the walls.

They were both forced into chairs, and their limbs were bound with electronic shackles.

Alan shot him a worried look. _How were they going to get out of this one?_

A woman walked in, her dagger-like heels rapping on the prefab flooring. She motioned for the guards to leave.

She was a nurse, with a cruel face. She looked like she enjoyed her work, even though it could be pretty gruesome at times.

As they watched, she began preparing two syringes. Charlie wasn't sure what they contained, but it didn't look promising.

She wasn't saying a word, and Charlie quickly concluded that it was all part of the theatrics, designed to intimidate them. He broke the silence.

"What do you want from us?" he asked.

The nurse turned around, apparently surprised that he had spoken.

"What do I want from you?" she shrugged. "That depends."

"On what?" Alan challenged.

"On what your brain scans offer."

She waddled over, and pulled what looked like futuristic lampshades over their heads. They glowed with iridescent, pulsing lights.

She raised an eyebrow.

"Hmm," she mused, "Yes, yes… very promising… I think you'll be very useful…"

"Oh, please get to the point," Alan groaned, "Or I'll die of boredom before you actually get round to killing me."

Despite himself, Charlie snorted in amusement.

The nurse glared at them both. Charlie was now thoroughly convinced she hated them with a passion.

"I think you may be able to advance the AI programme."

"The AI programme?" Charlie questioned. "What's that?"

She laughed, savouring the moment. "I'm going to pull your brains apart, and use your… _brilliant_ minds in our next generation of robot soldiers."

"You're going to remove our brains?" Charlie exclaimed, his fear reasserting itself.

"Oh yes," the nurse nodded seriously.

"I'm afraid I'm not a very good tactician," Alan protested.

"No!" Charlie added, "Me either. I'm a terrible tactician. I'm really bad at Call of Duty. And I've literally never won a game of chess."

"Really?" exclaimed Alan. "I'm surprised."

"Shut up!" hissed Charlie.

Alan opened his mouth to retort, but nodded in realisation.

"Hmm," the nurse considered this for a moment. "I think you are. Your brain scans were very promising."

She smiled at them.

"I think I'll start with you." She pointed at Charlie, running her long fingernails across his jawline.

He pulled away, and she snorted.

"No…" cried Alan.

"Yes," the nurse replied with glee, grabbed another machine, suspended above Charlie's head, and switched it on.

It buzzed; an angry wasp, trapped in a jar.

The machine was a huge drill, equipped with lasers, spinning saws, and drill-bits.

Charlie dreaded the thought of the machine piercing his skull, and he struggled to keep away from it for as long as possible. Delay the final moment.

"You are unbelievably stupid!" the Doctor's voice reverberated around the room.

The drilling machine sparked, and died. The nurse cried out in alarm.

Charlie issued a heavy sigh of relief. He was glad the Doctor had managed to find him, and get to him before his brain was extracted.

There was a little girl with him, hovering just behind his coat-tails. She was an alien, with what appeared to be a crown of roots growing from her cranium.

Commander Trusk, accompanied by several armed guards, burst in after him.

"Your rogue AI unit travelled back in time, and completely by chance, brought back a couple of humans," the Doctor spoke, as he released them both from their bonds.

Charlie leapt up, massaging his wrists.

"And you want to experiment on them!" he shouted into the commander's face. "You don't even know who they are!"

"They're not logged in our records," he explained, calmly.

"I guarantee you at least one of them is," the Doctor hissed back. "Do you understand the consequences of what you're doing?"

"We're winning this war," Trusk stated.

"Forget the war!" the Doctor growled, dashing over to Alan, and gesturing towards him with a grand wave of his hand.

Alan followed his gesture with confusion.

"This is Alan Turing!" he said.

"What?" Charlie uttered, in disbelief.

Alan frowned, a little spooked by the sudden attention. He noticed Charlie gaping at him.

Charlie had spent all this time in the company of one of the greatest minds in human history – and he'd had no idea.

Suddenly he felt massively insignificant, just as he had explaining what he felt looking at the stars. Just as he had when the Doctor had explained the rules of time travel to him, as he had with many others before.

 _He_ was nobody important. He was just _there_.

"This ends now!" the Doctor roared, aiming the sonic screwdriver at the computer systems in the room. They all crashed, the screens glitching and dying.

"No!" the nurse wailed. "That's all our data!"

"You have no right to do that," Trusk yelled.

His words were sucked into a huge void, and the space – the right to speak – was quickly dominated by the Doctor.

"Let me tell you something, 'commander'," the Doctor lectured him, "The AI machines were too dangerous. They were equipped with weapons, which they would have turned back on you, given the slightest opportunity. Your rogue AI didn't want to fight in your war."

"Her name was Kai," Charlie interrupted him.

The Doctor stared at him, and Charlie shut his mouth.

"Kai…" the Doctor continued, "She didn't want to fight. And why should she? You don't own her. She tried to convince me that she had earned the right to live. But I was too short-sighted. Again."

Charlie was amazed by the Doctor's words; that he wasn't ashamed to admit his mistake, and admit that he was wrong.

"I couldn't see past the fact that she was a machine, programmed to be a soldier. Not like Charlie, here."

He turned to Charlie, and gave him a small nod.

"He saw her for what she really was, I think. A living, thinking being, just like all of you."

"The AI are not _alive_ ," Trusk huffed.

"She was crying," Charlie recalled, "And she was… emotional, sad."

"The AI units are designed to perfectly imitate human emotional responses," Trusk explained, "Emotional responses are a tactical weakness, which can be exploited in battle."

Charlie's argument fell, the commander's words seeding his mind once again with doubts. Could Kai really have been expressing true emotions?

"It is all a matter of perspective, is it not?" Alan spoke up. The commander turned to him with a grimace, and Alan focussed on Charlie instead, throwing him an awkward half-smile. It made Charlie uncomfortable, but he was trying not to let it show.

"It very much depends upon how you define 'machine', and 'think', and 'alive'," he continued, speaking directly to Charlie, even though he was addressing the whole room.

He shot commander Trusk a cold glare. "Perhaps you need to adjust the parameters of your perception."

Trusk smirked at him.

The Doctor stepped in. "Nicely done," he muttered to Alan. "You're quicker than him." He gestured towards Charlie.

Charlie was about to protest with an offended remark, but decided that the Doctor was actually right.

"And you." The Doctor thrust a finger at Trusk. "This war. Why?"

Trusk shook his head. "The Myrox are a threat."

"No, they're not," the Doctor growled. "The Myrox are not warlike. Not like you."

"They attacked us!"

"You invaded their planet!"

"They have powerful weapons," Trusk argued.

The Doctor threw his hands in the air, issuing an exasperated cry of frustration. "They don't have weapons! They're energy converters. It's part of their anatomy. Do you know what the Myrox do with them?"

The commander opened his mouth to speak, but the Doctor cut him off.

"Do you _really_ know?" the Doctor spoke bitterly. "They make art. They build things! They move mountains, and channel rivers. They've shaped their landscape with their bare hands, and it was beautiful!"

The Doctor fumed, glaring at the commander with such intensity, that he couldn't hold his gaze. "It used to be magnificent. And look what you've done to it!"

The commander croaked a reply, but the Doctor ignored him.

His gaze turned momentarily towards Ariana, who wasn't paying any attention to their argument.

Her hands were shrouded in a violet glow, and the surface of a computer console responded to her touch. The metal warped and stretched, melting and twisting into beautiful forms.

She seemed entranced by the shapes she was sculpting, completely oblivious to the fact that she was playing with the controls to a deadly weapons system. A system which had relayed commands to destroy her home.

The Doctor turned back to Trusk, and issued a final declaration:

"This war is over."


	14. The Turing Test

The Doctor took Ariana's hand, and stormed out without another word.

At a loss for what else to do, and with no desire to hang around, Charlie and Alan followed.

The Doctor made sure that Ariana returned to her kin safely, and hastily left the Myrox world.

* * *

Alan had been just as amazed as Charlie had been when he'd entered the TARDIS for the first time.

He stared up at the space above him, lost in his calculations.

"This is a… time machine?" Alan questioned.

"Yep," Charlie agreed, leading on a railing, as the Doctor worked the controls.

"And the pair of you journey across the stars together?"

"That about sums it up," the Doctor acknowledged.

"Then…" Alan muttered, taking a moment to ponder another question. "Forgive me if… I can't disguise my curiosity. Is there any possibility you would consider me joining the two of you? The universe seems a truly fascinating place. It would be an honour to explore it."

Charlie looked at the Doctor, raising an eyebrow. Travelling through time and space with Alan Turing? Surely that was an opportunity of a lifetime?

The Doctor sighed.

"I'm very sorry, Alan, but I'm going to have to say no."

Alan looked crestfallen. But he straightened his posture, and stepped a little closer to the Doctor.

"Why not?"

The Doctor swung away, shaking his head dismissively.

"Just no."

"It's not as though there isn't enough room in here," Alan argued.

The Doctor turned to him.

"Why are you so keen?" he asked. "You almost got killed. It's rarely any less dangerous than it was today."

"What does that matter?" Alan spat.

"Why, though?" the Doctor pressed. "Why are you so determined to travel in time with me?"

Charlie wanted to step in. The Doctor was treating him rather unfairly.

"Because…"

"No. You don't have to tell me," the Doctor growled. "I _already know_."

"I don't believe you do," Alan protested, his fist clenched.

"You want to change something," the Doctor deduced.

Alan frowned.

"Yes."

"You can't."

"I just want to save my friend. I know you can help save him, with your… funny blue box that's larger on the inside!"

Charlie watched the two of them carefully, unsure how the exchange was going to play out.

"No," the Doctor muttered, a hint of weariness evident in his voice. "It would cause a temporal negation paradox. It would lead you to make different decisions, and stop you from arriving here."

Alan, although still cross, nodded. "Yes, I understand the logic of what you're saying."

"Then you understand why I won't let you come with me?" the Doctor asked.

"Yes," Alan snapped.

"Believe me, it's not that I don't like you," the Doctor spoke sincerely. "Because you're clever. You have a brilliant mind, and frankly, I was impressed with the running."

Alan bowed his head in shame, and muttered under his breath.

"I'll take you home, shall I?" the Doctor offered.

"If you insist," Alan relented, staring at Charlie for a moment.

Charlie wasn't sure what to think. He didn't understand why the Doctor was turning him down, either. This was _Alan Turing_.

"Please don't be mad at me," the Doctor moaned. "It'll make things very difficult for me in the future. Or, indeed, the past."

Alan shot him a puzzled expression.

The Doctor nodded. "That probably explains why you, uh… never mind."

He turned away, and busied himself at the TARDIS console.

* * *

The Doctor landed the TARDIS, and they stepped out.

They were back in the green courtyard, in Cambridge.

Charlie noticed Alan's dismay at stepping back into his old world.

It reminded him for a second of Kai's despair at returning to the battlefield. As though 'home' was the last place he wanted to return to.

"If you could keep all this secret…" the Doctor pressed, gesturing towards the TARDIS.

Alan smiled bashfully. "I would like to think that I'm very good at keeping secrets."

The Doctor laughed, which took Charlie by surprise – he hadn't heard the Doctor laugh before. This must have been the first time the Doctor had really relaxed his serious composure.

"Of course," he said gently.

Alan regarded them both, and Charlie felt his gaze upon him for longer than he was entirely comfortable with.

"Well, it's been a pleasure meeting you both. You are most… remarkable men."

"I would say the pleasure's been all ours, Mr Turing," countered the Doctor.

Alan masked his embarrassment with a confused smile.

"You intrigue me, Doctor," he spoke. "I can't quite work you out. You are something of… an enigma?"

Charlie managed to disguise his surprise, and glanced at the Doctor, whose expression remained unchanged.

"Enigma?" Charlie wondered quietly. "Interesting choice of words."

"You're not going to figure me out, Turing," the Doctor muttered wryly. "Don't bother trying."

"Well, farewell, silver fox," Alan asserted with a grin.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow, glanced at Charlie with an estranged smile, then turned his back on them, and swiftly returned to the TARDIS.

Charlie was left alone with Alan.

Alan flashed him a roguish smile, and Charlie felt a brief feeling of angst in his stomach, as if someone had tied his intestines to a car, and driven off with them.

"Farewell, Charlie," Alan muttered.

Charlie offered him a smile.

"Yeah," he considered. "It's been nice."

Alan raised an eyebrow, recalling their initial conversation – just metres from where they were currently standing.

"I sincerely hope not!"

"Ha! No. I mean it," Charlie shook his head, in disbelief. "It's been… really great talking to you."

Once again, he was in awe of the fact that he was speaking to _the_ Alan Turing.

"It has indeed been enlightening," Alan agreed. "I have to say, you've shown me considerable kindness, the like of which I haven't experienced… well, not in a long time."

"Your friend?" Charlie guessed.

Alan nodded.

"No-one treated me the way he did. He was a kind… gentle person."

Alan gazed down at his shoes, hiding his eyes.

"Damn clever, too. Always testing me," Alan muttered, with a reminiscent smirk.

"You loved him?" Charlie realised.

Alan looked sharply up at him, clearly assessing how much more he should reveal.

"I did," Alan admitted, quietly. "He never felt the same way, of course."

Charlie nodded, throwing him a sympathetic half-smile. He wasn't sure what to say. So he said nothing.

"I always… hoped… that somehow, his mind lived on."

Alan's eyes met his, _searching_ him.

"Perhaps it does."

Charlie frowned, feeling more and more uncomfortable by the second.

"Perhaps it could," he added.

That faraway look recaptured Alan's eyes once more, and it was a while before he spoke again.

"I thought that the Doctor could have taken me back, in his time machine, even just to see him." He blinked, and shook his head. "But I fear that would be impossible."

"Yeah," Charlie agreed, uselessly.

Alan looked up at him, with a furtive grin.

"I think you remind me of him. Just a bit," he said, almost a whisper. "I say a bit. I… I don't know."

Alan laughed awkwardly, and that awkwardness was growing larger between them by the minute.

"I've never had a mastery over words. If it weren't for…"

Alan paused, staring him straight in the eye.

"You're not coming back, are you?"

Charlie bit his lip, and looked back at the Doctor. He was busying himself at the TARDIS console, noticeably ignoring them.

"I honestly don't know."

"I think I shall miss you… Charlie."

Alan laid his hand on Charlie's shoulder, and he smiled awkwardly, feeling very, very uncomfortable, until Alan withdrew it.

"You're still hiding something. I can tell," Alan professed.

Charlie's face contorted in bewilderment.

"I don't know what you mean?" he replied quickly. The words came out of his mouth without his full control.

Alan nodded. He had a look in his eyes; a wisdom, which seemed beyond his years.

Charlie was a little concerned. He couldn't work out what it was that Alan _knew_.

"One should be what one is, I think," Alan advised. "I hope you know that."

"Uh, I guess?"

"Come on, we can't stay any longer," the Doctor called.

Charlie glanced round. The Doctor was impatiently setting some controls. He wasn't entirely certain how the Doctor was managing to perform said action in such an accusatory manner.

"No? Bugger…" muttered Alan.

Charlie said his last goodbyes, and dashed back into the TARDIS. The doors slammed shut behind him, and the engines roared.

"Why not?" he asked, striding up to the console.

"Because it gets incredibly awkward, and I really, really hate farewells."

"But that's Alan Turing," Charlie muttered in exasperation.

"It didn't escape my notice."

"Why didn't you let him come with us? I don't understand."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow.

"I've already explained that, haven't I?"

Charlie frowned, shrugging uneasily. "I know that. But he wanted to save his friend."

"I know," the Doctor replied. "Christopher Morcom. Died of bovine tuberculosis before he came to Cambridge."

Charlie stared at him for a moment, shaking his head.

"Do you know that because he's famous, or do you just know stuff about everyone?" Charlie challenged him.

"Look it up if you don't believe me," the Doctor said, pushing the TARDIS screen towards him.

There was a webpage on Alan Turing, but Charlie ignored it.

"But you still haven't explained _why_ ," Charlie protested.

The Doctor sighed, but he didn't object to Charlie's interrogation.

"Some things always happen. Without the death of Christopher Morcom, Turing may not have dedicated himself to the inventions that eventually came to pass. The codebreaking that helped end World War Two. The computers that evolved into far more powerful machines. Machines that perhaps… one day in the future, learn to think for themselves."

Charlie shook his head. This wasn't the answer he wanted. Weren't they supposed to help? Make things better? Isn't that what the Doctor did?

The Doctor looked at him, trying to read his thoughts.

"Alan Turing is one of the most important minds in your species' history. The consequences of altering his past would have been disastrous. Kai must have realised that. He's essentially her great-great-great-something grandfather."

"So what if he _hadn't_ been important to history? Would you have helped him then?" Charlie asked, his voice brittle.

The Doctor frowned. "Is there such a thing?" he suggested, kindly. "Someone who isn't important to history?"

Charlie turned away, his quivering chin betraying his feelings. He couldn't watch the Doctor calmly shoot him down.

"I know you're upset," the Doctor fathomed. "Because I think you know what happened to Alan."

"Yes," Charlie whispered hoarsely, staring blankly at the TARDIS screen.

"What's the point?" he said, after a while.

The Doctor frowned, so Charlie explained.

"What's the point in doing this, if we can't change anything? If we can't make a difference?"

"Who says we haven't?" the Doctor challenged. "We ended a war."

" _You_ ended a war."

" _You_ managed to convince me Kai deserved a second chance," the Doctor confessed. "You changed my mind, and I think you changed a few others, as well."

"Me included, I guess," Charlie admitted, resignedly.

"No doubt we have emerged from this different men…" the Doctor quoted.

Charlie threw him a puzzled look, wondering where he'd heard the phrase before. A look which the Doctor picked up on.

"Alan Turing," the Doctor explained. "You know he designed a chess-playing algorithm, which he nicknamed Charlie?"

"Really? No…" Charlie dismissed.

"Honest. He told me," the Doctor insisted. "Name didn't stick, though. He never said why he changed it."

Charlie narrowed his eyes. "You just made that up."

"I did not," the Doctor protested, raising his eyebrows in innocence.

Charlie laughed, despite the overwhelming feeling that he had absolutely nothing to laugh about.

He shook his head, and tried to ignore the Doctor's mock-confused smile.

He knew that the Doctor was only pretending to smile, although he wasn't entirely certain how he could tell.

The Doctor was probably just trying to make him feel better. Perhaps the Doctor was keeping something from him.

Well, that made two of them.

They were both lying. And they both knew it.

They both knew when to wear the mask, that hides one's true face from the world.

They both knew how to play the imitation game.

* * *

 ** _The Adventure Continues..._**

The Twelfth Doctor and Charlie will return in: _Web of Doom_. The Doctor finally decides it's time to put Charlie to the test. When they answer a distress call, they discover that the UNIT Moonbase is under attack.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

 **Thanks to everyone who followed, reviewed, and read this adventure.**

 **Just knowing that someone enjoys these stories makes posting them worthwhile.**


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